While it’s been a legal requirement to microchip your dog for several years, microchipping your cat has only been the law since 10th June 2024.
Microchipping is one of the most effective ways to reunite lost pets with their owners. Without a chip, it can be incredibly difficult to bring a missing cat home. A microchip provides a permanent form of ID that doesn’t fall off or get lost like a collar can. If your cat is found, vets, shelters and rescue centres can quickly scan the chip and contact you, no matter how far your little adventurer has roamed.
Meet Maggie (or as We Knew Her, Alba)
Maggie is from Telford and went missing around twelve months before she came to us. Despite a local Facebook campaign by her owners and a good deal of searching, she was nowhere to be found.
Late last year, we received a call from a household that had taken in a stray cat but could no longer keep her as their own cats didn’t get along. Off we went and brought the beautiful Alba, as she was known, into our rescue.
As we do with every cat that comes in, we scanned her straight away. That scan revealed that this girl was actually called Maggie, and she was a long way from home.
We contacted her owners, who travelled over 50 miles to collect her. No one knows how Maggie made it all the way to Cheshire; that will always be a mystery. But it’s a happy ending, and her owners said she settled back in as if she had never left.
The Takeaway
Maggie’s story is a perfect example of why microchipping works.
A simple scan was all it took to reunite her with the family who had been missing her for a year. If your cat isn’t chipped yet, please get it done. It’s quick, affordable, and it could be the thing that brings them home.