After Marmaduke, a nine-year-old cat, went missing in Murrayville, his owners did everything they could to find him.
Debbie Briglio and Dan Brown had just moved to the neighbourhood from Burnaby July.
When Briglio was carrying the cat into the house, he panicked, scratched her, and ran.
“That was the last we saw of him,” she said.
For months, with son Carson, they put up posters and walked the neighbourhood, calling Marmaduke’s name.
Some people reported seeing the cat, but they just couldn’t track him down.
“I kind of gave up hope in October,” said Briglio. They hadn’t seen their cat in four months.
But before giving up, Briglio had spoken to their vet and made sure that Marmaduke’s ear tattoo number was up to date and on file.
That was how he was identified in the first weekend of December. Workers noticed a stray cat hanging out in a shed near their work site, and saw that he had a tattoo. They took the cat to LAPS, which quickly tracked down Brown and Briglio, and gave them the good news.
“I was pretty shocked,” Briglio said. “I asked them to repeat it a couple times.”
She went and picked him up at LAPS.
Although he’s never been a cat who asked for a lot of attention, he recognized her, and put his back up for her to scratch, Briglio said.
Marmaduke has always been an indoor-outdoor cat, not one who roamed too far, but clever enough to avoid the coyotes at his old neighbourhood near Deer Lake in Burnaby, Briglio said.
But when he came back, he hadn’t even lost any weight.
“Somebody must have been feeding him,” Briglio said.
She has a message for whoever was looking out for the family’s cat over the last few months.
“Thank you so much!” Briglio said. “It’s amazing how he came back.”
LAPS was happy to re-unite pet and family. It doesn’t happen often with cats. Langley’s shelters has a better rate at returning cats to owners than many other B.C. shelters, but it is still less than 10 per cent.
Getting a cat tattooed or microchipped is the best way to help them be returned, said LAPS director Jayne Nelson.