Posted on 12/27/2017 6:58:59 AM PST by BenLurkin
When devastating wildfires broke out in California's wine country this October, Jenn Thompson felt a tug at her heart to adopt one of the hundreds of cats rescued from the ash.
"I was telling one of my friends out here, 'I feel like I should adopt one of these cats,' because there were so many," said Thompson, of Longmont. "We lost a cat to cancer last spring and I've been telling my husband, 'We have a vacancy.'"
Before she could think about it any longer, she received a call on Oct. 31.
...
Thompson's cat, Pilot, who wandered away from the family's then-home in Santa Rosa, Calif., in 2007, had been found in the rubble by a good Samaritan looking for her own cats a little more than a mile from where Pilot went missing all those years ago.
Pilot was badly burned and in extremely poor shape, but alive and in the care of the Northern California pet hospital where Thompson's sister works. Vets had scanned the microchip inserted when he was a kitten and tracked down Thompson, who had since moved to Longmont.
After a trip to Northern California to fetch Pilot, two surgeries, including one to amputate five of his toes, and lots of healing, he's finally settling into his new — but familiar — home with the Thompsons and their three other cats.
"I think he recognized my voice and that was pretty cool," Thompson said. "When I brought him back, he definitely recognized my daughter. Definitely. She was 8 when he went missing. Right away, he went and cuddled up with her
(Excerpt) Read more at timescall.com ...
“Cats need breakaway collars, otherwise they’d strangle themselves on shrubs and branches. “
—
A friend of mine lost a dog because of a collar-——tried to jump a fence,didn’t make it but the collar caught on the fence when he fell back.
Dreadful.
.
> You really don’t want the collar to stay on and be difficult to shed. Cats tend to climb and go through snaggy obstacles. If the collar doesn’t breakaway then the cat can get injured or die.
+1
Many years ago when I lived in an apartment building, I came home one night to see a feral cat around the front porch. Since I had some cat food left over from when I had a cat, I took a bowl down for it.
When it came up to the bowl, I saw that someone had stupidly and cruelly collared it with a frickin' zip tie when it was small and the cat had grown into it to the point it was literally choking to death and its eyes were starting to bulge out.
So I ran upstairs to get a pair of wire cutters but when I got back to the porch, the cat was gone and I never saw it again. I will never forget the sight of that poor creature for as long as I live......
Cats can get their claws stuck in collars while scratching themselves. Ours did, when I was a kid. If he hadn’t been right by the bedroom window where we could hear him wailing because he was stuck, something bad could have happened. Since then, I’ve never put a collar on a cat.
I always thought that, having strictly indoor cats, there was no real need to chip. But you never know what might happen, so I think it’s a good idea for any pet.
She recognized her pee smells.
In 2001 I adopted a wonderful, loving dog who’d been horribly abused as a puppy. The day he was brought to my house for his pre-adoption interview I walked him around the yard. He started leaning on me about half way through the walk and I knew it was going to work. Then we went into the house and he ran straight to the bedroom, jumped up on the bed, and made himself at home. We were that way for the next ten years until cancer took him.
LOL
I view the chip as last chance, a collar with our phone number is first. Our cats have been known to slide open a screen door and go cruising. Had one can go into a dog owners house and get cornered. The phone call brought the damn fool home.
Cats can be ingenious escape-artists.
I did not know that cats knew how to transfer implanted locator chips from one cat to another. They have the technology but not the dexterity to perform the actual surgery.
Thanks for a wonderful story..brightened my day.
I will never forget him/her either. I’m a bit claustrophobic and am having a mini-panic attack.
Actually, they reprogram the chip with their brains. They had to develop that capability because they don’t have any thumbs.
They developed it through a mutation that occurred when a fever spread through the feline world. Ted Nugent wrote a song about it.
Absolutely. When our cats wore collars with bells to avoid bird killing, we always made sure they were the kind that could come off one way or the other.
The cat was probably not ‘feral’ but just simply went to another person’s home, and stayed there, probably better food...................
probably better food...................
This is how I acquire all my cats.
Only the best!
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