FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Angela Townsend
Tel.: 908-237-5300 ext. 235
E-mail: at@tabbysplace.org
One day in March of 2008 Kelly Cahill's cherished marmalade tabby, Al, somehow slipped out of the safety of her house. Kelly and her husband, Jason, had ample reason to worry. In addition to having lived indoors for all of his four years, Al required medication for chronic seizures. Kelly feared for the worst but took every step she knew to bring Al home, all to no avail. By late summer, Al had been gone for five months. Kelly had given up hope of finding Al alive.
Kelly & Al Reunited After 5 Months
One morning in August, while working in her garden, Sharon Rosenberg looked up and saw a marmalade tabby gazing at her. Sharon and her husband, Jonathan, scooped up the gregarious fellow, named him Gavin, and brought him to Tabby's Place, a no-kill, cage-free cat sanctuary that Jonathan founded in 2003. Once at Tabby's Place, Gavin was scanned with a microchip-detecting wand. Had a microchip been found, Tabby's Place would have been able to contact the owner, and return Gavin. Alas, the orange cat was chip-less.
In the meantime, the Cahills had moved and Kelly had started working 20 miles away…at Tabby's Place. Kelly arrived at the sanctuary one afternoon to feed the newest arrivals. The last thing she expected was to walk into the room and see a much-loved, dearly-missed face staring back at her, with a tag labeled "Gavin" hanging from his cage. Despite his "new name" and an infection on his face from his months in the wild, there was no mistaking this cat - it was Al. "A miracle" is the only way the Tabby's Place team can describe the reunion. Under less miraculous circumstances, Gavin's story almost certainly would have ended in a bad way. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that only 4% of cats in shelters are reunited with their owners. Add Al's seizure disorder, and the unlikelihood of his finding his way to the very sanctuary where Kelly had just begun to work, and the odds of Al and Kelly's reunion were infinitesimal. For Kelly and Jason, this is a lesson in the importance of identifying every pet – even "indoor-only" cats – to make such happy endings much more likely.
To help other pet lovers tilt the odds in favor of a happy reunion in the event that their pets become lost, Tabby's team is offering a "Microchipping Clinic" at the sanctuary in New Jersey from 10:00am-4:00pm on October 5th, 2008, the sanctuary's 5th anniversary. Both cats and dogs are welcome at the clinic, and the fee will be $25 to microchip each pet. For additional information, call Tabby's Place at 908-237-5300 or e-mail info@tabbysplace.org. Visit Tabby's Place on the web at www.tabbysplace.org.
Tabby's Place is located at 1100 US Highway 202, Ringoes, NJ 08551. For more information, please visit http://www.tabbysplace.org/ or contact info@tabbysplace.org or 908-237-5300. Photos andadditional information are available.