When Charmaine Wright returned from an overseas holiday to find her cat Tyson missing, little did she know that despite being microchipped and handed into the pound, the system would fail to protect him.
Ms Wright arrived home at Currans Hill on June 11 to a phone message from a Campbelltown pound employee that said her five-year-old Maine Koon breed cat was there.
But when she went to the pound to pick him up, Ms Wright was told Tyson had been given back to the people who brought him.
….
Tyson never showed up at Renbury Farm and hasn’t been seen since.
Ironically, in this instance, being microchipped has turned out to be an obstacle to Tyson being reunited with Charmaine.
Because the cat was chipped to an address on Currans Hill (the Camden Council area), it was required that he be impounded at Renbury.
Instead of arranging a safe transfer, Campbelltown staff requested the surrendering party to drive him across town.
And that was when he went missing.
Campbelltown Council’s acting compliance services manager, Paul Curley… said the cat had still not been dropped at the facility and that the council didn’t have any contact details for the person who first brought him in.
Campbelltown will now be reviewing their practices to accept all pets, regardless of the address on the microchip. But that is of little comfort to Charmaine.
“I don’t know who’s got my cat and what they’re doing to him. Who knows who these people are? They could have killed him or chucked him away or just kept him.”
