A mysterious cat with a foreign microchip has been found in rural Oklahoma – leaving animal welfare workers wondering how he got there.
The well-groomed gray cat – known as Samson to shelter staff – was brought into Sand Springs Animal Welfare in Oklahoma in ‘really good condition,’ according to shelter staff.
But when workers scanned his microchip, they discovered it was registered to an owner over 4,000 miles away in the United Kingdom.
It is still a mystery how the cat was discovered thousands of miles from home in rural Oklahoma.
The feline showed no typical signs of a stray cat’s rough life on the streets.
‘He was in really good condition, so we weren’t sure what was going on,’ Animal Welfare Coordinator Tracy Anderson told First Alert 4 News.
‘But we scanned him and he had a microchip, so we looked up the microchip company and called them, and they said it’s registered in the UK’ she added.
The mystery continued when Anderson’s team tracked down the British owner linked to the microchip – only her cat was not missing, but rather it was sitting right beside her in the UK.
A mysterious cat with a foreign microchip has been found in rural Oklahoma – leaving animal welfare workers wondering how he got there
‘Her cat was right there with her,’ Anderson explained.
‘So something happened when they microchipped the cats, they probably got switched, and we haven’t been able to track down the other numbers.’
The well-maintained condition of the mystery moggy suggests he wasn’t living rough, leading shelter staff to believe someone had paid the considerable expenses to transport him to America.
‘Well, he would’ve had to have been shipped over and it’s really expensive to have them shipped over and then they have to be quarantined and all kinds of stuff,’ Anderson said.
‘So, somebody loved this cat and put the money into getting him over here but it’s just hard to tell what happened to them, maybe they passed away or something, and it’s just really hard to tell.
‘But he’s with us, and he’ll get a good home either way,’ she added.
But when workers scanned his microchip, they discovered the animal’s microchip was registered to an owner over 4,000 miles away in the United Kingdom
Animal Welfare Coordinator Tracy Anderson told First Alert 4 News: ‘We scanned him and he had a microchip, so we looked up the microchip company and called them, and they said it’s registered in the UK
Anderson highlighted the importance of registering microchips.
‘Let you know the importance of microchipping and registering your microchips too, because a lot of times we get microchipped animals and we can’t find anybody on the registry,’ Anderson said.
Having completed his mandatory stray hold period, the cultured cat is now up for adoption.
