Please microchip your cats!

Looking at all the rescue websites around the country and seeing so many lost and found cats (and dogs), wouldn't it all be so much simpler if everyone MICROCHIPPED their pets!!! Then when a cat is found, a simple scan shows up the chip number, a quick phone call and viola, owner and cat reunited in mere minutes.  It would certainly help hugely in many cases, I believe.

Instead we have a situation where a rescue takes in a friendly, healthy cat, does it best to find its owner via websites, local radio, etc and when no owner is found, spends time and effort finding a new home for it. Rescue personnel spend hundreds of man hours every year finding new homes for cats that already have a home out there somewhere if only it could be found. I'm sure the cat would prefer, in most cases, to be back home in its familiar bed, getting its favourite food, and surrounded by its loving owners instead of going to a new home. However nice that new home might be, it is still a strange new environment with a new bed, new food, new owners and a whole new set of routines to learn.

In the meantime the previous owners are probably getting a new cat to replace the lost one which is great but wouldn't it make more sense to get the lost one back?  A simple microchip solves this whole situation, yet microchipping is in its infancy in Ireland.  Vets or Rescues don't seem to push it and the public are very much guided by what rescues and vets do, suggest and recommend.

So let's go for it!   Please, please, please microchip your cats.  And if you find a stray/injured/lost cat, bring it to your local vet to have it scanned.  There may be a frantic owner trying to find it.