A New York family has been reunited with their cat 10 years after the pet slipped out of their home and disappeared.
The Montclair Township Animal Shelter in New Jersey said in a Facebook post that a Good Samaritan recently brought in a stray cat.
“And of course, the first thing we do is scan for a microchip,” the shelter said.
The scan immediately identified the animal as belonging to Sean Haberle, an upstate New York resident who was living in Montclair at the time that Asa went missing.
“BINGO. MICROCHIP AND REGISTERED! The family still had the same phone number,” according to the shelter.
The cat, named Asa, had been adopted by Haberle as a kitten a decade earlier, according to WABC-TV.
Asa vanished after getting through an open window screen and climbing into a rain gutter. A rescue attempt by Haberle failed when a ladder gave way, sending the rescuer to the ground as the cat ran off.
“So I found her, went and tried to save her on top of a rickety ladder. Long story short, the I reached out, the cat freaked out,” Haberle told WABC-TV.
“The ladder went out, I went down, cat took off.”
The family searched extensively, posting flyers, checking with shelters and veterinarians, walking the neighborhood daily and keeping Asa’s microchip information up to date even after they later moved to New York’s Finger Lakes region.
“We always hoped that we’d see her somewhere. Looked everywhere. And then eventually, she just never turned up,” Haberle told WABC-TV.
No sightings were ever reported. After the family moved to upstate New York, they still thought of Asa.
“My middle son and I talked about it probably a month ago,” Haberle said.
“I wonder what ever happened to that cat. It was such a sweet cat.”
The shelter said the discovery of the chip allowed staff to deliver the kind of news they rarely get to give.
“We made the call every shelter dreams of making,” it said in its Facebook post.
According to Haberle, the family was in disbelief when the shelter called to let him know that their missing cat was found.
“We thought, this is some kind of scam,” he said. “My wife vetted it, and it turned out to be true.”
Shelter staff said Asa cooperated during the full-body scan that verified the match.
The shelter said this story was made possible only because the chip remained properly registered and linked to an active phone number.
The shelter used the case to remind pet owners of the importance of proper registration.
It also wants to use the joyous occasion to plead for help as it is in desperate need for cat food donations to give to families who need help feeding their fur babies.
