Stop & Examine

Pet rescues.

We start this week with a couple of pet rescues that had happy endings.

Our first tail (sorry, that’s the last pun - we’ll leave that to the PR teams who just couldn’t resist them) is of eight-month-old cat Storm, who went missing on Christmas Day from her home in Erdington.

On January 12, she had travelled to Birmingham New Street with a passenger who was intending to take her to a rehoming centre in Stafford.

But when the passenger had to leave the station unexpectedly, Storm was left at the station reception in the care of Shift Station Manager Lucy Martin.

Cat lover Lucy took Storm to her local vet for a check-up and to see if she was micro-chipped. That drew a blank, but after two days of checking social media, she came across a local lost and found Facebook page - and saw a post from Storm’s owner Chantelle Campbell.

“I was absolutely over the moon when Lucy got in touch to say that she had found a cat that matched the description on my post,” she said.

“I’m so grateful to Lucy and Network Rail for reaching out.” Lucy added: “Working in a busy station means that acquiring animals on shift isn’t particularly unusual. At the start of lockdown last year, we had to rehome a baby dove.

“We knew it was a long shot finding Storm’s forever family again, but we wanted to make sure we tried our best to get her home.”

Meanwhile, ten-year old Japanese Spitz Luka ended up being indulged in snacks and given a ride on a test train after he was rescued by Network Rail staff.

They found the dog walking along the tracks at Long Eaton, after initially thinking that the train had hit him when the driver applied the emergency brake.

However, when On-Train Technician Rhys Wharton looked out of

the window, he saw Luka walking along the railway.

Having checked the lines were blocked, Wharton and fellow technician Beverley Topping used a few snacks to catch him.

A vet was able to scan Luka’s microchip, by which time Bev had managed to find his owners on Facebook.

Carole Dawson, Luka’s owner, said: “He went missing the same morning on one of our usual walks. Luka was a very lucky dog that day. I can’t thank Rhys and Beverley enough.”