About 8 months ago our cat Merlin disappeared. He and his brother were inside cats, but occasionally they would manage to sneak out, although they always returned within an hour or so. But one day they got out and Merlin never came back. We looked and looked, put up signs, combed the neighborhood, called in Humane Society, etc. But no Merlin. Many tears from the kids. About 4 months later we went to the pound and got another cat, but it just wasn’t the same without Merlin.
This morning we got a call from a local vet saying someone had brought in a stray to be checked, and his microchip showed him to be Merlin! He’d been catching birds in a woman’s backyard for a few weeks, but would come to her and purr whenever she went out. She already had 3 cats and didn’t want another, so she brought him by the vet. So now Merlin is back. He seems more or less the same, not too traumatized by his long adventure. He still wants belly rubs and ear scratches.
Where has he been for the last 8 months? How did he end up over a mile away? Will he remember us? What am I going to do with 3 cats?
I just love a happy ending. A dog here in our city went missing and his owners put up hundreds of posters, offered a reward, and had organized searches for him. After two months someone found and caught him and got him back to his owners. It made the local TV news as one of those “feel good” stories.
I don’t recall the exact statistic, but I have heard that microchips make a drastic difference in the odds of getting your animal back. Glad that you had yours chipped! What a great thing for your daughter.
I suspect Merlin had some human help, and wasn’t living on just catching birds, especially if he was an indoors cat. OTOH, I’ve known cats that shuttled between households and didn’t seem to have much loyalty to either one.
Fluff the Mercocat disappeared for nearly 4 months one winter, and was presumed dead. We live waaay out in the boonies, and any nearby neighbors would have recognized him, or at least recognized his tags and our name. So I don’t think he moved in with anyone else.
He turned up skinny as a rail during a spring thaw, and hung around until his demise a few years later, at the age of 18.
When he went missing he was a tubby lardo-belly, and now he’s not overly thin, but not chubby either. I’m sure he must have had human help to survive a Tucson summer. Finding water was surely a bigger issue than food, as lizards are plentiful around here. I just wish he could talk and tell me his story.
And, yes, I was thinking of that movie when I invented the title.
i work in a vet clinic, and we highly recommend everyone microchip every pet, even “indoor” cats. They can and do get out! Just last week, we were able to reunite a family with a dog that had been (presumably) stolen from a town over an hour away from our clinic. The finders never would have thought to run an ad so far away, but with the chip, the dog was home that night. You can get it done as cheaply as $10 (if you find a chipping clinic or somesuch) but even at $40 it’s a bargain!
When we adopted Merlin (and his brother) from the pound, the microchip was automatic. The only action required from me was to fill out a one page form giving our information to the microchip agency and then mailing it in. Adopting those two cats from the pound cost a grand total of $80 and that included two cats, two neuterings, two sets of shots and two microchips. What a deal!
It’s not unheard of for cats to adopt temporary homes, especially if people feed them. So if Merlin was getting a hand with the food from someone else, he may decide to go on another adventure as soon as he gets bored at home again.
While I’m sure you give your cat a nice home, to him it’s just a place to get a pat and a feed now that he’s been out in the world.
Remember the saying, “How you gonna keep them down on the farm, now that they’ve seen Paris”
We adopted Maya as a stray–she literally threw herself at Hallgirl2’s feet while she was waiting for the school bus (Hallgirl2 was waiting for the bus, not Maya). We had her for several years and she was one of four indoor-outdoor cats we had. One day, she didn’t show up for breakfast. We did the usual posters up, door to door canvasing and calls to the Humane Society, but no Maya.
Winter came and went. Early one spring morning, I opened the back door to the other cats, and in walked Maya like she’d never left. She was considerably heavier, and we figured that she’d been keeping some old lady company for the winter. She, however, wouldn’t tell us where she’d been. (She’s awfully tip lipped like that.)
Still, we didn’t learn our lesson.
A couple of years later, during one summer day, she again disappeared. Repeat the posters, door to door canvasing and calls. No Maya.
About a month later, she showed up. This time, her fur wass matted, she’d lost a LOT of weight (skin and bones) and was literally starving. We figured she’d been locked in someone’s storage shed, but again, she wouldn’t talk about it. Too traumatic, we figured.
This time, we learned our lesson and Maya was never allowed outside again, regardless of how many time she requested just a bit of fresh air. To this day, she remains inside.
were the kids excited to have him back?