FLORIDA – Eight long years ago, an Orlando woman lost her cat and as time went by, she gave up hope she would ever see him again. But thanks to a microchip, she’s now reunited with her missing pet.
“Words cannot describe,” explains Kathleen Crichton. “He looks different, but he’s still the same. He’s my Smelly Cat.”
Crichton first met her cat when he just simply showed up at her Orlando home one day as a stray 15 years ago. She had just watched an episode of “Friends” where Phoebe sings “Smelly Cat.” So she named him Smelly Cat. Eight years ago, Crichton let Smelly Cat out, and he never returned home.
“My thoughts was he likes to go out. He’ll be back the next day. He’ll be back the next day and the next day and he just didn’t,” explains Crichton.
However, about a month ago, a woman found Smelly Cat in Gainesville and began nursing him back to health. She brought him over to to the Millhopper Veterinary Medical Center for a check up.
“When she told us she found him as a stray, we decided to scan him for a microchip,” explains Millhopper veterinarian Esther Devlin. “Lo and behold there was the microchip. And a few phone calls and waiting for mom to call back.”
“I really didn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it, eight years later,” states Crichton. “I thought it was a mistake. And then they described him and said he was very loud. I said, ‘Yeah, that’s Smelly.'”
Dr. Devlin claims the microchip technology is a great way to increase your chances of getting your pets back if they go missing.
“I wish all pets would have them. And I wish people would keep their contact information up to date with their microchips,” Dr. Devlin goes on to say. “So many times we get pets with microchips and gets us so excited to get them reunited. Come to find out, they were never registered with the microchips or they moved and didn’t update their information.”
Crichton now says that she’s grateful she had her cat microchipped. “If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have Smelly right now,” says Crichton.
She says she is taking Smelly Cat to her vet then taking him back to Orlando – to the very same home he lived in eight years ago.
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