Keep calling about ‘missing’ cats, say animal charities
GUERNSEY animal charities are getting more than 1,000 calls a year asking them to check on cats that are often mistakenly reported missing.
But they still want islanders to call them if they are concerned about an unknown animal’s welfare.
GSPCA manager Steve Byrne said the charity will get anything from 500 to 1,000 calls a year concerning cats.
‘We do get contacted about lost cats all the time, but we are much happier for people to call than not call us,’ he said.
‘Even though it's a lot of work, it’s what we do. The return of lost cats was actually part of the reason the GSPCA was founded 150 years ago.
‘The real message is to make sure that cat owners have their cats microchipped and they keep the details up to date. Then it’s fairly painless experience of someone popping out in a van with a hand-held chip reader and us checking a database.’
Micro-chipping is the practice of inserting a tiny microchip, about the size of a grain of rice, under a cat’s skin, which provides the animal with its own unique code.
If the cat is then found it can be scanned with a scanner and matched to contact details, which are kept on a UK database.
Both the GSPCA and Animal Aid will microchip a cat for just £4.99.
Animal Aid founder Sue Vidamour said she gets about a dozen calls a week from islanders who have found unknown cats.
‘People should always ring, even if that cat is in good condition, it’s something we can check so easily with a microchip reader,’ she said.
‘Sometimes you do the microchip check and you find its from a house just a few streets away and it’s simple just to ring the owners, but quite often the animal will be lost and need to be returned a fair distance.’
She said the island did have a problem with unregistered microchips and with people not updating addresses after they had moved.
‘A few weeks ago we picked up a cat whose microchip showed it was registered to an address in the UK,’ she said.
‘Unfortunately we were unable to trace the owner. The poor cat was in such a state that sadly it had to be put down.’
She urged cat owners who were unsure to check their pet's microchip was registered and the address details were up to date.
Cats that were not micro-chipped were taken to the charity's shelter and their details shared on social media.
‘People can check the microchip is registered very easily. If you know the number you could ring us or your vet and they can check, or if you don’t know the number you can pop into see us and we can scan your pet and check quickly.’
