This seems more suited to polling rather than debating, hence IMHO.
This article tells the tale of a cat who ran off, was presumed lost forever, but was returned to his owner ten years later because of an implanted microchip.
Happy ending? I thought so, until I read this:
So we’ve got an outdoor cat that ran away and was gone for ten years. The evidence points to someone having cared for him. For unknown reasons he is found away from his new owners and the Humane Society returns him to his previous owner.
What happens if the new owners come looking for him? What about the possibility that some heartbroken little girl has lost her kitty, only to find out that she can never have it back? It could be that the new owners have cared for this cat for the last ten years - why return it to the guy that owned him for only two years, ten years ago?
More generally - who should claim ownership in a situation like this? The guy that had him for two years or the guy that had him for the last ten? Do you have a responsibility to make sure a cat that comes into your home and adopts you isn’t a runaway? If no one comes forward right away but suddenly ten years later they do, what would you do?
I can see both sides of this argument, and honsetly I don’t know for sure which way to lean.
I’m not sure what to think. I wonder if the new owners, if there actually was a specific set of people who adopted the cat, tried to find the original owner from this part of the article:
“I was heartbroken,” Inglis said. “I spent six months looking for him.”
He put up posters, called the pound, went door-to-door, checked in at the dentist’s. Nothing. Finally, he gave up, though he always figured Ted was alive.
I think there might be a good possibility the cat didn’t have a specific owner, but went from house to house. There’s a black cat very similar to Ted in the article, that visits us all of the time. I’ve talked to all of my adjacent neighbors, and though many of them have cats, he isn’t one of theirs. We feed him or give him water when he begs, he’s come in for naps or to wait out storms as well. He’s the cleanest, softest, goofiest cat. And I would swear he lives with someone, but I’m not really sure.
If Ted’s situation is similar to the black cat in our neighborhood, I’d go ahead and call it a happy ending.
My 2 cats ran off in 1997 because they were allowed outside right after a move. I tried going back to the old place, nothing. If somebody in 2007 told me they found my cats but somebody else had been caring for them, I’d say we each call them and see who they come to.
Of course Ted from the story could be a stray, but the average lifespan of an outdoor cat is only 6 years.
My cat was obviously a runaway when I got him, half a year old. Ten minutes after getting him out of the rain, he was purring in my lap. The most trusting and cuddly cat ever. We asked everywhere, at the animal shelter, all the vets in the area, put up posters etc., but nobody seemed to miss him.
When I had had him for more than two years, I was on my way to the vet with him when a woman stops me in the street and exclaims “that´s my cat!” I had a terrible shock. I told her I´d had him for two years, and when she had a closer look, she found out he had slightly different markings (he´s a very peculiar black-and-white cat) - and her cat was at home, anyway. She thought it must have gotten away because I was carrying “her cat” around.
I don´t know what I would have done if it had been her cat. It would have broken my heart. I mean jeez, over two years versus half a year… and he´s such a sweet little thing. I couldn´t bear giving him away. I miss him like hell when I´m gone for a week, and he appears to feel the same. He spends most of the day and the night purring in my lap (or walking across my computer keyboard, of course…). More a dog than a cat, really. No way could I give him “back”. OTOH, if I´d had this sweet thing for half a year and then he ran away, I would certainly want him back from the new “owners”, even after 10 years.
I guess it´s really up to the cat - take him to both places, let both people spend time with him, and just find out where he feels he belongs. Or you could have shared custody
I guess in this case though, he must have been roaming around, because surely any vet would notice the microchip, wouldn´t they? I mean, ten years is quite a time - if you´re not just feeding the cat when it comes by, you´re bound to take it to the vet once in a while.
Cite? (oh i never thought I would say that) I may be wrong but the indoor cat seems to be a particularly American thing. Our family cat was 18 and deaf as a post when a dog attacked her on the driveway (that was the saddest moment ever, we always thought she would just go to sleep oneday)
Mums current cat is 16 and still going strong, if she spends more then 4 hours a day inside you know it is pissing down. She loves people but loves roaming about the neighbourhood even more (actually her fav thing is sleeping on the roof, but she is old now).
The cat had a chip. If this cat was cared for by someone, they would have taken the cat to the vet and discovered the chip. Either the cat took up with a family who just put out food but didn’t provide vet care, or the cat was living the life described by cichlidiot.
Well, my cat Phil went missing Christmas before last. If he ever came back, I would want him no matter how long he’d been gone. Alas, he doesn’t have a microchip and I fear he was stolen.
Do we have any Veterinarians on the board that can confirm that if a cat came in for a routine checkup, they would notice the chip?
And even if they did notice, why would they think it was strange? Surely they wouldn’t come right out and ask the person who brought their pet in if they had a chip installed - they wouldn’t assume they had stolen it.
I think it depends on the specific type of chip, but the ones in my dogs are small enough to be injected through a hypodermic needle. A big honkin’ needle, but a needle nonetheless. Something that small isn’t going to be palpated during a routine physical exam. I know, because I’ve tried palpating the ones in my girls, and I can’t do it when I’m trying to. If one of them disappeared, the only way someone would know that they were chipped would be the tags on their collars, or to take them to the Humane Society and have them scanned.
There are at least 3 or 4 different companies selling the chips, and they have different, incompatible coding systems on them. So even if the vet noticed the imbedded chip, (and they’re not all that noticable) if it was a different brand than the one your vet was affiliated with, he would be unable to read the data on that chip.
That’s why in the horse industry, people are still staying with the freeze-marking technology, which puts a permenant marking, readable by anyone, hidden under the mane of the horse.
That’s not true. While the scanners might not pick up the exact chip number or information encoded on the chip, they will scan the name of the company the chip is registered to. Thus, if you scan a critter with an AVID® chip with a HomeAgain™ scanner, the scanner will read “AVID” or something similar. Also, you can use universal chips which can be read by any company’s scanner, or use universal scanners which can read AVID®, HomeAgain™, and Destron® chips. At the very least, the scanner will show that there is a chip there, just not one readable by that particular scanner.
Every shelter in the US is supposed to have a scanner or set of scanners, and is supposed to automatically check every animal that comes through. If the people who found the cat took it in for a routine exam, the vet would in all likelihood not have scanned the animal unless it was made clear that it was a found cat. There’d be no reason to. Also, the chip is not palpable or visible, so without scanning there’s no way to tell the chip is there. Regardless, there’d be no reason to question the presence of the chip, unless the owners told the vet they had found the cat.
If I found a cat I´d first try to find out where he belonged to and whether there was someone out there missing him. This would include going to the humane society, and they would find the chip.
If I decided to keep the cat, I would take him to the vet first thing in the morning to make sure he´s healthy and doesn´t have flees and get him a few vaccinations. There wouldn´t be any reason not to tell the vet it was a stray cat, so if he found the chip, he´d know it wasn´t me who had it implanted.
I just don´t see why someone should take in a stray cat, decide to keep him and not tell the vet they´d found him. Unless they stole him, but that´s not very likely in this case.
Anyway, if he was roaming from house to house and getting fed and patted wherever he went, there´s no reason why a cat shouldn´t survive 10 years as an outdoor cat, as long as he stayed clear of cars.
I am not a vet, but I would think if a vet noticed a chip in a cat, he would simply assume the person standing in front of him had it… uh… “installed” for lack of a better word.
Our Bad Boy Kitty was a stray, friendly as hell, who turned up one day sleeping in our windowbox (among the geraniums.) We asked around the neighborhood, and everyone seemed to be in agreement as to when he first appeared in the area, a couple weeks previously. A bunch of people were feeding him on the assumption that he belonged to someone in the neighborhood and was simply out for a stroll. He developed a dog-like habit of following my daughter around (I’m sure she did absolutely nothing to encourage this, nosirreebob :rolleyes: ) and one night a dreadful thunderstorm inspired us to take him in for the night. No one came looking for him, we checked the paper and asked around and no one seemed to be missing him, so we took him to the vet. He had earmites and fleas and was slightly undernourished, so the vet said in all likelihood he’d been on his own for some time. He’s been with us now for five years, and if someone suddenly showed up to claim him, I would fight for him, chip or no chip.
If there are any vets on board who are going to pipe up and say that they do not ask how a first time patient was aquired, then remind me not to take my pets to that vet. (It’s possible that one person “found” that cat, and then gave it to the person, who told the vet my cousin gave me this cat or something.)
Additionally, any vets who implant and promote the chips, and then don’t scan “found” pets for chips, are not providing very good service.
