THE CAT THAT CAME BACK AFTER TEN YEARS
A MISSING cat has been reunited with its owners – 10 years after it went missing.
Catrin Thomas and Dayle Preece were living in Cathays, Cardiff, in 2001 when Dayle spotted a white kitten in a skip, covered in rubbish and food.
He decided to rescue the kitten, who was only a couple of days old, and Catrin bottle-fed it back to health.
The couple named their new family member Poppy and spent the next seven years together.
But in 2008, Dayle and Catrin were devastated to find Poppy had gone missing.
They spent the following year searching for their missing pet.
“I was heartbroken,” said Catrin. “I had bottle-fed her, so obviously you have a special bond.
“We’d had her for seven years, from when she was only a few days old.
“We didn’t know what had happened and assumed the worst.
“We handed out missing cat posters and I spent the next year looking for her.”
The pair – who have two other cats, Tigger and Alfie – later moved to Llandaff but they never stopped thinking about their beloved Poppy.
Yet the pair were stunned earlier this month when Dayle received a call from a vet telling him Poppy had been found a decade after vanishing – just half a mile from where she went missing.
“I just couldn’t believe it, I’m still in shock now,” Catrin said.
“We were just gobsmacked. She’s 17 now, we have no idea where she’s been.
“A young girl had found Poppy in the street in Cathays, about 800 metres from where we used to live.
“She was in a bad way. She had fleas and mites and was really underweight.
“We don’t think she had been a stray for 10 years because she was still friendly around people, but she was in a right state.
“Poppy had one litter and we gave one kitten to my aunty, but he sadly passed away so Poppy has outlived her children.
“I just can’t believe we have her back. Although she looked different, we recognised her straight away with her white fur and black patch”
Hayley Nicholls, of Doctor Doolittle Vets, Whitchurch Road, was working when Poppy was taken into the surgery and was amazed to discover she had been missing for so long.
“I’ve been working in the veternary world for about four years and this is the second time this has happened,” said Hayley who has been at the surgery for three years.
“When she came in she was in a bit of a state and we scanned her to see if she was microchipped.
“That’s when we realised she had been missing for such a long time.
“It was really amazing being able to tell them Poppy had been found, it was quite emotional.”
Catrin is urging pet owners to have their pets chipped and for vets to check whether an animal is chipped when they’re taken into vet practices.
“It’s so important that people have their cats chipped, but it’s also important vets check for the chip,” she said.
“If somebody had taken Poppy to the vet and they had scanned her, we could have been reunited a lot sooner. Poppy was probably taken to the vets at some point but it seems like she wasn’t scanned.
“I wish we had more time with her because she is 17 now, but we’re so relieved to have her home.”
Hayley also stressed the importance of micochipping pets and keeping the information up-to-date, saying “there would have been no chance of reuniting Poppy with her owners if she wasn’t microchipped.”