Social media was abuzz lat week with reports of a globetrotting cat that managed to make its way from Australia to London and then Northern Ireland – a trip of almost 11,000 miles but it turns out Tigger the ginger was not such an intrepid traveler afterall.
When the 25-year-old ginger cat, named Ozzie by his rescuers, was found wandering the streets of Laurelvale, County Armagh he was taken to the Cats Protection center where his microchip identification revealed that he was registered in Sydney in 2000 as ‘Tigger’.
But Armagh Cats Protection said via Facebook that the story isn’t quite as miraculous as first thought, “It turns out the cat’s Aussie owners are globetrotters themselves – having traveled around the world, with their feline friend tailing them along the way.
“They had left Tigger in the care of some friends in Armagh but the adventurous pet ran away and didn’t return.
“The cat will now be reunited with its owners.”
Volunteers launched a campaign on social media to uncover how the moggy ended up on the other side of the world – and the post has been shared more than 18,000 times.
The cat is currently on a drip after suffering kidney failure. Cats Protection spokesman Gillian McMullen said: ‘I responded to a call from a member of the public who was concerned about a stray.
“The poor cat was starving but obviously had been cared for in the past because it was wearing a collar. We discovered it was microchipped and this is where the mystery begins.”
The microchip revealed that Ozzie was born in 1989, making him 25 – ten years older than the age of the average cat and roughly 117 in human years.
Miss McMullen went on to say, “The cat had been microchipped in Australia, and in 2004 he turned up as a stray in a vet clinic in London, but no owners could be traced. If only he could tell us about his life – and tell us how he got here!”
Images: Facebook Armagh Cats Protection