Phoebe was excited to return home and be reunited with owner Brian Savage
A three-year-old cat has been reunited with her owners after she was found wandering the streets 30 miles from home – nearly three months after going missing.
Beloved cat Phoebe is thought to have entered a delivery van making stops at Savage’s Bar in Castlewellan, Co Down which is run by her owners Brian and Anne Savage in May.
She was handed in to Cats Protection’s Belfast Adoption Centre after being spotted wandering the streets in Dundonald – some 30 miles from home.
After she was scanned, it revealed she was microchipped and Cats Protection staff were able to swiftly contact her owners to break the happy news that she was safe and well.
After collecting Phoebe from the centre, Brian said: “Phoebe was so excited when she got home, she kept running around and wanted to spend lots of time with us.
“We’re so thrilled she was found – after 10 weeks you do start to lose hope a bit, so it was a lovely surprise to get the call.
We live on the edge of the forest, so when she didn’t come home we searched and searched. We asked everyone around but there had been no sign or sightings at all. We have vans arriving and leaving all day with deliveries for our bar, so I think she must have jumped in the back of one of them and ended up in Dundonald.”
He added: “I can’t see how else she could have ended up there
“We’re just relieved we had her microchipped, otherwise there’s no way we would have got her back.”
Phoebe’s return follows Cats Protection’s campaign for compulsory microchipping of pet cats in Northern Ireland, a measure which will become law in England next year.
