Lost cat returned home after nine years

[Allhallowsday]

Lost cat returned home after nine years    

LONDON (Reuters) - A couple have been reunited with their missing cat after nine years, the RSPCA said on Wednesday.
 
Dixie, a 15-year-old ginger cat, disappeared in 1999 and her owners thought she had been killed by a car.

She was found less than half a mile from her home in Birmingham after a concerned resident rang the animal charity to report a thin and dishevelled cat who had been in the area for a couple of months...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080910/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_britain_cat

[Newt]

This happened to someone I know, a few years back.  They lost their cat near Calgary, Alberta.  A year later, they moved near Toronto, Ontario.  (Well over a thousand miles away)  Got a new cat.  Kids grew up.  Then a call came from the SPCA in Ontario: their *first* cat had been found - in Ontario- and identified through its microchip.  The microchip codes used in Alberta are different than the ones used in Ontario, so the files do not cross-reference.  Some kind soul had taken the trouble to get the chip read (takes different hardware) and track them, through their move, and reunite them with their cat.  Mind you: it was essentially a cat they did not 'know' at this point...