MISAMIS GOV LAUNCHES SEARCH FOR ‘QUARANTINED’ CATS
PAGADIAN CITY
—In the rush to go home, a resident of Clarin town in Misamis Occidental province, who was stranded in Iligan City, failed to secure travel credentials for her three pet cats.
So when she passed through a quarantine control checkpoint on Thursday in Bonifacio town, in Misamis Occidental’s border with Zamboanga del Sur, she was asked to leave the cats behind.
Eager to return home, she reluctantly did as authorities told her. However, she hardly slept that night as she kept thinking and crying over the fate of the cats.
On Friday evening, the cats’ owner sought the help of Misamis Occidental Gov. Philip Tan, who has been active on social media. Tan has been using social media to update his constituents on all the provincial government’s policies and actions related to the coronavirus health crisis.
From her home in Clarin where she is in self-isolation, the cats’ owner messaged Tan that she was unaware of the required veterinary clearance so she could bring her pets home.
She confided how distraught she was, thinking about what happened to her feline pets. “I only wanted to have them back and bring them home.”
She is so attached to the cats, she added, “because I cared for them since they were kittens.”
“I have no one else to turn to, Gov. I hope you will help me,” she implored.
Unexpected request
Tan said he never expected to face such a “one of a kind” concern amid the serious issues they face each day, as Misamis Occidental grapples with the influx of returnees, mostly from Manila, driving the number of suspected and confirmed new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the province.
On that Friday evening, Tan was monitoring the arrival in Ozamiz City of 179 returnees from Manila aboard 2GO Shipping Lines, 13 of whom were found reactive to the rapid test done on all returnees. They were immediately swabbed for a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test. “Lord, help!” Tan posted on social media upon learning of the rapid test results.
Moved
From June 1 to July 7, 32 of 4,620 returnees to the province have tested positive for COVID-19, and 17 of them have recovered. As of July 16, Misamis Occidental has a total of 50 cases, 27 of which are active, with one death.
Apparently moved by the candor of the cats’ owner, Tan acted on the request.
He immediately messaged the chat groups of border control personnel, department heads and elected provincial officials, asking for ideas how he can solve the “cat problem.”
“Please find ways to find the cat,” Tan asked the border control officers.
In the anxious wait for updates, Tan even suggested he would instead replace these with his own cats.
Eventually, two of the cats were found. When Tan gladly gave an update to their owner, she said they were three, launching another round of search.
Cops guarding cats
At one point, the two cats were guarded by policemen so that these were not lost while border control officers were looking for the third one.
When all three were completely found, Tan asked pictures of them so the owner could confirm if these were the cats she was looking for.
The cats’ owner thanked Tan for their efforts saying she was “so happy even just seeing them reunited.”
Tan said the cats were currently on quarantine and being cared for by border control officers. He volunteered to pick them up and deliver them to the owner.
“I never knew until recently that looking for a cat is part of the work of a governor,” Tan said in a post on Saturday.