“It was my turn to do Saturday at the cattery. My job was to meet adopters, coming to pick up their new family member and greet visitors looking to adopt. I had a list of who was coming and at what time, I’d done it before and knew the ropes.

Except today there was an unusual one. A family was coming to reunite with Luna, their cat who had got lost some time before and, fortunately, ended up in our care. They’d spotted her on our website flagged as ready for adoption. The name was different of course but they knew it was her. 

They contacted us and we did what checking we could, though it was hard to be one-hundred-percent sure since Luna wasn’t microchipped. We were convinced that, at the very least, they would give her a good home in any case, so we agreed to allowing them to visit.

Luna was a smart cat with her own opinion on everything, especially cat carriers. She hated them and had a reputation for it being almost impossible to get her into one. So, I tried to get her comfortable with it before her owners arrived. She wasn’t having any of it, so I left it open in her pen lined with her favourite blanket and got on with the rest of the day’s work. 

The family arrived, they’d been through a very tough time and finding Luna was the first bright spot for some while. As we walked to her pen, I explained that I might need some help getting Luna into her carrier. 

We all went in. Luna took one look and literally hopped right into her carrier. There was no doubt this was her family and she just wanted to go home. 

But it could have ended so differently and almost did. If Luna had been chipped before she wandered off and, equally importantly, they had kept any change of address up to date it would have been a simple matter to reunite her with her family. She probably would never even have come into our care in the first place, any vet or police officer could have read the chip and contacted them right away. 

It's not law yet, though we hope it soon will be, but, as Luna’s story shows, there is a far more important reason for microchipping your cat than simply staying inside the law. 

We know there must be many owners out there who lose their cats and never find them again. And, even if they are brought to us and we help them to find a new loving family, their old family will never know that their beloved cat is at least safe and happy. 

And we do sometimes get cats coming into our care that are microchipped, but the owners have moved home and left no forwarding address. We do our best but all too often it’s the same result as if they had never been chipped at all.”

Please, if you love them, chip them, and keep it up to date.

An update on the law of microchipping can be read in our blog, ‘Pet microchipping rules are soon changing.’