Blue Cross blog

We were puzzled when stray cat Tiggy’s microchip revealed she should be in France. Soon we found ourselves on a European-wide search for her owner as Blue Cross editor Natasha Kleanthous reveals…

It’s not the first time we’ve taken in a stray tabby cat, but staff at our Tiverton rehoming centre were shocked when they learned that this one had a French microchip.

Seven-year-old Tiggy was registered to an address in France but, when we tried to track her owner down, they were no longer contactable.

We didn’t know if Tiggy had managed to hitch a ride over from France on her own or if her family had relocated to the UK.

We kept her in isolation while we began our search for her owners.

Tiverton centre manager Sarah Bussell says: “We have to be extra careful if an animal may have come from another country and we don’t know what vaccinations they have had because of the small risk of rabies.

“We were in contact with Defra and Trading Standards to make sure we were following all the right procedures to keep the other animals at the centre safe.”

We used contacts in both the UK and France and, after some pretty impressive detective work by the Tiverton centre team, they managed to track down her owner, Lynn Garnett, via her daughter on Facebook.

Lynn, who moved back from France last year and now lives in Devon, was overjoyed to be reunited with Tiggy, who had been missing for a month.

She told us: “It’s so lovely to have Tiggy back - she’s very relaxed and seems quite unfazed by the whole experience.

“She had only been in the country a few weeks when she went missing, so we think she may have been a bit disorientated by her new surroundings.

Lynn added: “Blue Cross did a great job taking care of her and everyone went to extraordinary lengths to find us, which wouldn’t have been possible without the details on her microchip.

“We’ll definitely be getting her details updated now and added to a UK microchip database.”

Are your details up to date?

If your pet is microchipped, make sure your contact details are up to date so you can be reunited with your pet should the worst happen.

To celebrate National Microchipping Month Petlog has an exclusive offer where you can upgrade to Petlog Premium for £7.50 throughout the month of June 2012 – a 50 per cent saving.

This means that you can update your details for free as often as you like, as well as a whole list of other benefits. 

To find out more, visit the National Microchipping Month website.