Hampshire woman discovers the missing Lynx!
June 2007
Lynx the Cat found after being missing for 10 years.
Not an anthropological discovery, but a blast from the past nevertheless, as Lynx, a strayed Tabby, was reunited with her human after being missing for an entire decade. Lynx was only two year old when she vanished from her home in Hook, Hampshire (UK). Despite house to house inquiries, multiple lost cat flyers and pleas in the local newspaper, Lynx was never traced. Not surprisingly, Lynx's owner, Patricia Charnet, thought she would never see her pet again. But last month, ten years after Lynx disappeared, Mrs Charnet got a phone call from Blue Cross in Oxfordshire (UK). Blue Cross is one of the largest UK pet sanctuaries with branches in many parts of the country. In late June 2007 a Blue Cross centre took in a stray tabby found in Carterton, Oxfordshire. After a routine scan, they found that the tabby had a microchip and through the national database they could trace the owner of the newly-found cat.
Mrs Charnet was not at home when the Blue Cross phoned, so they left a message on her answerphone, telling her that they had her cat. When Mrs Charnet first heard the message she thought that there must have been a mistake. She phoned Blue Cross and to her delight she was reassured that they indeed had her, now 12 year old, missing tabby.
What happened to Lynx after her disappearance, and how she got from Hampshire to Oxfordshire (a distance of some 50 miles), will remain a mystery. But everyone hopes that Lynx's travels have come to an end. She is now back at her old home and doing very well.
Mrs Jones from Blue Cross said that she could still not believe that Lynx had been missing for 10 years and she was absolutely delighted to have given a a happy ending to Lynx's decade-long adventure. But on a more sombre note, this story reinforces how important it is to microchip your cat. Microchipping is painless and permanent. Although collars are useful, they are not risk-free, and they can be easily lost. A microchip is injected under the skin and provides permanent identification for a cat.
