I'll have chips with mine ....

Hello everyone

My name's Harriet, or maybe Harry, or actually maybe it's Tigger.  You see, being a cat I can't speak so I can't tell you.

Here's my story...I was found straying in a Bradford suburb in a pretty poor condition.  Thin, hungry and dirty.  The kind lady who found me made enquiries, but no one knew where I'd come from, so she took me in and offered me a home.

Because she didn't know my name, and because she thought I was a boy cat (perish the thought!), she called me Harry.  A few weeks later, I went along to the vets for "the snip".  They took one look under my tail and realised that I am a girl.

My kind friend tried very hard to keep me, but she had been rescuing quite a few stray cats and we were all getting on top of each other, so she asked Haworth Cat Rescue to find me a place at their centre with a view to rehoming me.  When I got to their lovely centre, they decided to change my name from Harry to Harriet to reduce confusion about whether I am a girl or a boy.

Another thing they did was to check me for a microchip to see if anyone had owned me in the past, and yes, their machine went beep-beep (which made us all jump!) because just under my skin on the back of my neck is a little piece of fantastic technology no bigger than a grain of rice.  This little microchip (or chip) has a number which is readable by the little magic machine which cat rescues and vets have, and the number is registered on a database alongside my owners' name and address.

Haworth Cat Rescue wrote to my owners to tell them I was at their centre, and they were thrilled to bits as I had been missing for over two years.  They hotfooted it to the Centre and recognised me straight away - and told the staff and volunteers that my real name is Tigger!

So I am now back at home and very happy to be here.

There is a moral to my story (well, three, actually).

1. Get your cat (and dog and any animal you can) microchipped - it doesn't cost a great deal.

2. If you move house, make sure you update the details - had my owners moved and not updated the details I would never have been reunited.

3. If you find a cat who appears to have no owner, take him or her to a vet to be scanned.  A vet won't charge you and it will only take a minute or two.  Although I will always be grateful to the lady who found me and helped me, had she had me scanned, I would have been reunited with my owners many months earlier.

And a little plea to any vet reading this - please scan any animals that you haven't seen before, particularly if the person bringing it in doesn't know where it lived previously - microchips only work if the animal is scanned!