It’s important to ensure your animals have contact information included on their collar, just in case your favourite pet goes missing — or is stolen, like one Langford woman recently discovered.
Caitlyn Ashley found this out the hard way when she received a text late Saturday night from someone saying they had found her cat near the Luxton Fair Grounds. She let them know that was alright as Dutchess, her six-year-old feline, sometimes makes the trek from their house near the Galloping Goose trail.
The next day she got another text about her cat, but this time the number had a Vancouver area code.
“This lady called from Surrey to say she has my cat,” explained Ashley.
“Someone had come to her house looking for a person that used to live there and said they also had someone’s cat.”
It’s after receiving these texts that panic finally started to set in for Ashley, who immediately called police in both the West Shore and Surrey.
While not high on the priority list for a large RCMP detachment, Surrey officers ended up going by the residence and picking up Ashley’s cat and taking it to a local veterinary clinic to make sure it hadn’t been harmed.
Unable to retrieve the cat herself, Ashley reached out to a local Facebook site for Westshore moms and found two people willing to help her out. One was already going to the Vancouver area and offered to pick up Dutchess from the vet and drop her off at the Tsawwassen ferry terminal. And another agreed to go over, pick him up and bring him back on the ferry.
“Love how random people from the internet are more helpful in trying to save my cat then my own friends lol,” Ashley posted on Facebook, once she was sure the reunion would be taking place.
The moral of the story is that once again, the age-old children’s song rings true: the cat came back the very next day.
@ragnarhaagen
ragnar.haagen@bpdigital.ca
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