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indie the montreal cat was missing for eight years. she turned up in ottawa
"she's exactly the way i remember her" says the man who adopted the cat 13 years ago and hasn't seen her in eight.
jul 24 2024
2 minute read
staff at the ottawa humane society were able to reunite indie with their montreal family after eight years, thanks to a microchip with updated information.
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the cat came back the very next … well, nearly a decade actually.
after vanishing eight years ago from her montreal home, indie the cat was reunited with her humans this week after turning up at the ottawa humane society.
that was a curveball, said grant pretorius, who adopted indie 13 years ago when she was only a few months old. there were conditions on the adoption: he must keep her name, have her spayed and vaccinated — and microchipped.
pretorious’s nickname for indie was houdini, because she was always trying to escape. then came the day he noticed she wasn’t sleeping in her special spot. the amount of food in her dish hadn’t changed. he thought the worst.
she might have been stolen, or picked up and not brought to a vet, pretorious believes; she couldn’t have gotten to ottawa by herself. she’s in good shape and appears to have had another home while she was away.
“she’s exactly the way i remember her,” he says. “i go ‘click-click’ and she comes running as fast as ever.”
four years after her disappearance, and probably not directly related to it, montreal issued a bylaw requiring all cats and dogs be microchipped. a microchip — about the size of a grain of rice — is injected below the animal’s skin and can be scanned by most veterinarians and shelters. it connects with the contact information of the pet’s family, which can be updated as needed.
“a microchip gives your pet a ticket home,” the ohs said on instagram . indie was found on miikana rd. in ottawa and was and friendly when she arrived at the shelter, stephen smith of the ohs told the gazette.
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their staff was able to scan indie’s microchip and contact her family, who told them she’d slipped out of their house eight years ago.
indie is settling in well, adjusting to life back in montreal with pretorious, his three daughters and his partner, amanda. she’s even launched her own instagram account, @indiethecat2024 .
there’s another cat in indie’s home now, 11-year-old koda. as they adjust to each other, indie spends time in the girls’ room, then in pretorious’s bedroom, then is allowed to wander the house while koda spends time in the bedrooms. they’ve crossed paths during the rotations, he says, and there’s been hissing. koda hadn’t met indie before she disappeared — she was an only child.
“now she’s got a sister,” pretorious says.
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