Luncheon and microchip get Smudge home

Kate Russell

Smudge the cat has been reunited with her family after being missing for six months, all thanks to her microchip and a slice of luncheon.

The two-year-old tabby went missing on 30 December last year from Parkers Rd in Tāhunanui. It wasn’t until last month that her owner, Sammie Adair, got a call from the SPCA saying that her cat had been found at Nelson Airport.

Sammie says, when Smudge went missing they were very worried. “She is a very homely cat, always home for dinner. It was unusual for her to wander off.” They spent months putting flyers up around their neighbourhood and searching lost pet Facebook pages and websites.

“After around three months we accepted that we probably wouldn’t see her again,” she says. But on 13 June, Sammie got a phone call.

“I was on the beach with my daughter when my phone rang. It was the SPCA, and they told me they had Smudge. I started crying when they said she was alive.”

According to staff at Nelson Airport, Smudge had been living around the airport for several months, with numerous reports from airside users of a cat in the area of the airfield. Smudge had been spotted inside the Rescue Fire Service (RFS) station, on the main apron, and even at the southern end of the runway. After receiving another sighting, RFS set up a cage trap baited with a slice of ham and chicken luncheon, which did the trick. She was then taken to the SPCA, where she was scanned for a microchip.

SPCA Nelson Centre Manager,

Julie Jane, says when they received Smudge she was a little underweight, but overall in “pretty good condition”.

Sammie says it was a special reunion.

“When we picked her up, she knew who I was straight away, she was really smoochy.”

Julie says happy endings like

Smudge’s aren’t always the case for missing pets.

“In the last seven months we have taken in 241 stray cats and only 42 (17 per cent) were reclaimed by their owners. Some of that 17 per cent would have been due to microchipping.”

She says that if Smudge wasn’t microchipped it would have been up to her owners to be monitoring the Lost Pet website for her.

“We hold and advertise stray cats for seven days, before desexing and putting them up for adoption, so this is what would have happened if Smudge wasn’t reunited via her microchip or reclaimed from her owner seeing her on Lost Pet.”

Meanwhile, Smudge is now loving life back at home and making up for lost meals, according to Sammie.

And, it looks like she has now become very fond of the food that saved her - luncheon.

“I buy ham and chicken luncheon for my daughter and as soon as I pull the deli bag out of the fridge she comes running, no matter where she is.”