A five year odyssey for a feline by the name of Dexter appears to have finally reached a conclusion, after a long-long covert stay at a prison was interfered with by his appearance onboard an offshore oil rig, which finally resulted in a call to animal services.
The cat was a normal “well loved and cherished” hangout at Her Majesty’s Prison Grampian in Peterhead, Scotland, where staff used to “fuss over” him and even gave him the nickname One-eyed Joe.
At that point, a most unexplainable thing happened: One-eyed Joe somehow wound up in a shipping container a mile and a half away at the town’s port, prior to being transported onto an offshore oil rig, where the workers “ran away frightened” after the jet black cat leaped out of the container.
After finishing up an episode card, (which was most likely entertaining) the staff on board the rig took to Joe most generously, who was now quite comfortable with living alongside the laborers. As indicated by The National, he was “spoiled rotten” during the time he lived there.
However, eventually someone called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Aberdeen, who recovered Joe after the feline had been taken off the rig by a helicopter – a remarkable accomplishment when you consider how hard getting a cat into a carrier ordinarily is.
“We were alerted to an incident of a cat being found in a shipping container offshore,” Aimee Findlay, a Scottish SPCA animal rescue officer, said in a statement. “We’ve no idea how the cat ended up there, but we attended the heliport to collect him.”
One-eyed Joe was then microchipped, and after checking the staff discovered his name was actually Dexter, and that his owner had lost the feline five years ago.
A microchip is a small, electronic chip encased in a glass chamber that is about the same size as a grain of rice. The microchip itself does not have a battery – it is activated by a scanner that is passed over the area, and the radio waves put out by the scanner activates the chip. The chip transmits the identification number to the scanner which displays the number on the screen. The microchip itself is also called a transponder. Contradictory to belief, It is not a GPS device and cannot track your animal if it gets lost. However, your information is used by the company to contact you.
“We are so glad that he was well looked after for the time he was missing but we’re even more delighted to be able to reunite him with his original owner, thanks to his microchip being up to date,” Findlay said.
What a heartwarming story, full of luck! Had it not been for the benefit of the microchip in Dexter, he would have been lost forever. This goes to show that if you’ve got furry family members, that it is important to get them microchipped. Sure, not all animals will wash offshore like this, but nevertheless they can be returned to you at any moment if the unfortunate happens. Statistics show that 1 out of 3 pets will go missing in their lifetime, and 90% of them will never return home (that’s a very high percentage). However, on the upside, a chipped cat is 20 times more likely to get back to its owner, and most pets brought to the shelters are never reunited with their family if they have not been microchipped. With technology always evolving, and processes getting better these statistics are bound to climb as well, which is great news for all furry companions and their families.
This story syndicated with permission from My Faith News