Urgent Help Please.....
Hi I'm Sue and new to this forum, Hubby and I motorhome, but he usually deals with all the admin etc!
I am really hoping this community can help in a race against time, to find a British(we believe) motor-homing couple, to bring a happy ending, to an incredible story. This couple would have been travelling through France in July, UK bound we believe, but we cannot be sure.
I am part of a team of animal lovers working furiously to find these people, before time runs out. Across the internet as we have worked to spread the word, this has at times been branded a scam or hoax, but it absolutely is not, that has just served to hinder us
Here is the story......back in July a British couple in a motorhome lost their 3 legged, tortoiseshell cat at the services "Aire des Haras au Sap Andre61" on the A28 in Normandy, France.
The couple returned several times to the service station, handing out and posting posters, to find their cat, until someone reported to them that a tortoiseshell cat had been killed on the motorway close to the services. At this point the couple apparently removed the posters and did not return again.
Fast forward to the start of November, when a lorry driver that knew the story of the missing cat, spotted the 3 legged cat, alive and well at the services! The kindly lorry driver, spent time to get her into a local rescue, which as I understand it, for strays in France, is a lottery win, as many are not so fortunate.
Ever since then, there has been a huge online search, to find this couple who are presumably grieving their cat and doubtless reliving the awful circumstances that caused her to be lost in the first place. The cat is apparently not microchipped, so the owners cannot be traced that way, but in our search we have encountered many stories of failed and migrated chips, so we are keeping an open mind that she may indeed be chipped, but the information is not available to us right now if she is.
All attempts to find one of the original posters, or trace an online appeal for the lost cat have so far failed, but time is running out, as at the end of the month the rescue will allow her to be rehomed.(I think it is a French legal requirement for her to be held for a month).
We are desperate to find these people and bring a happy ending to this extraordinary story.
It would be tragic to find these people a day too late, once she has left the rescue.
I am new to the forum, if I should be posting this elsewhere, please help by advising me, but I am appealing to everyone who reads this to share this story any way you can to help us to find this couple.
Thanks so much for reading this if you have made it so far
Sue
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Comments
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Not having a pet of our own we don't know the full procedures for French regulations, viz-a- vis visits to French vets. I do know you are required to have your pet checked over before returning to the UK but not sure what the situation is for outward journeys.
Why am I mentioning this? Well, if the cat had to be checked on its outward journey in France by a French vet then it might be an idea to contact those vets nearest the ports of Calais, Dieppe and Dunquerque to see if they remember a 3 legged cat sometime in early summer. A long shot admittedly.
Here is a link that someone on the forum has compiled. Sorry I can't help any further.
It might be that one of the Moderators might move this to the Overseas section as it might allow more members who travel overseas to see it there.
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Please don’t post it more than once as duplicate threads cause confusion and are usually closed down or removed. As WN said, a mod might move this thread if another section is deemed more appropriate.
Latest Activity shows posts in chronological order irrespective of their category but it’s not an infinite list. You can access LA by tapping twice on the Club Together tab above right or by tapping Club Together in the breadcrumb trail.
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Quite a few of the posters will check latest postings by clicking on "Club Together" in the top right just below the search eyeglass.
Personally, as time is of the essence, I would copy your post and paste it in Overseas section as well. Moderators may not like having duplicate threads but in view of the circumstances I would hope they would allow it for a short period.
It might jog someones memory.
Edit - I have just seen your post TW and would normally agree but it would appear time is running out and it doesn't really matter where answers come from as long as they come. It's an unusual posting but I would hope a bit of lassitude might prevail.
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One wonders how the cat actually got into France without a functioning microchip as I understand that is part of the checks made as you enter France. Might this suggest it wasn't a British couple? Whilst the owners went back to the Service Station apparently several times it is rather surprising that they themselves did not initiate some sort of Social Media campaign at the time or when they returned home?
David
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Sue you could try other fora. One of the biggest is Motorhome Fun. Last time I looked it had nearly 100k members.
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Thank you for your help and suggestions so far.
Wherenext: I will repost it thank you
LLM: I will try Motorhome Fun thank you
David, this is one of the mysteries, as to whether the cat’s chip had moved or ceased working, was a stray they had picked up, so many unknowns until we find these people.
Regards a social media campaign when they lost her, we have multiple people telling us they recall seeing it online at the time, but as happens with Facebook etc, they cannot be certain what page saw it on as it is a while back now, but the team of us have done extensive searches online to find it with no luck….we wonder if once they thought she was dead, they removed their post and all shares were at that point removed too…..it is incredibly frustrating!
Thank you all x
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Sue, your thread has been moved into the overseas section by a mod.
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It has already been mentioned on Motorhome Fun and also on Twitter (X) and also on a French based online English news website The Connexion. Perhaps you could post on this Facebook Group "European Touring Caravan, campervan and Camping Friends"
Given that this all happened in July of this year, had it been a couple from the UK they would have by now returned to the UK. Obviously there are lots of people who don't "do" Social media but it would surprise me if they had given up hope completely.
David
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This has already been posted on ukcampsite forum 3 weeks ago.
JK
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2 points which need to be said.
The first is a question of whether the owners will in fact be overjoyed at the return of the cat. As you haven't traced them you do not know what their reaction will be. They will have passed through various stages of grieving and personally speaking I would have accepted that my dear cat was deceased. Who knows, they may have got another cat and moved on. I know a dog owner who went out and acquired a puppy 2 days after his previous well loved dog passed away.
The second point is you mention that the cat will shortly be rehomed. Cats are very resilient creatures and hopefully the cat's current animal centre will ensure a good home for it. It's outlook is a hopeful one.
I appreciate your efforts are well meaning but at the end off the day the cat appears to have a future which from its point of view is a successful outcome.
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It is a legal obligation in France for all cats to be identified by microchip. If as the OP says the cat was checked and no chip was found it would have been classed as unidentified and i.a.w French policy may have been euthanized within 10 days.
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It seems that the owners of the cat have been found and will soon be reunited with their missing cat. This is according to a post shared on the Bailey Motorhomers Group Buying and Selling via another group! Apparently the owners are not British but French, might well explain the reason for there being no chip? So seemingly, All's Well That Ends Well.
David
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LLM, you are so right.....her staff have been found!!
Update:
I am elated to announce that against all odds the owners have been found!! They were found yesterday, just a matter of a couple of days before our time ran out.
We were surprised to find they are in fact a French family. They were devastated by the loss of their little girl and now cannot quite believe this happening, it really is a miracle.
I have been lucky enough, through encountering this story on Facebook at the start of November, when it first emerged, to become part of a small team, who met and have bonded over the search for the owners of this precious girl. We are all Brits, spread across France, Spain, Scotland and England.
We have worked tirelessly, struggling to know why we just couldn’t find them, believing they were English. A huge amount of time and effort this week, by one of the team members who is bilingual, when she set about calling vets across France and happily encountered one who remembered scribbling a phone number down ages ago and the rest is history!
The family will be reunited with their little lady at the weekend and we will share pictures when we get them. Thanks must go to the French rescue who gave her shelter and care, not a certainty for French strays I believe.
I thank everyone for their responses, suggestions and support via my posts last weekend as we became increasingly desperate and apologies to all that I have ignored in the last 24 hours as the news broke to us and we rushed to establish it was actually fact.
So many people have cared about this little girl, her family and the outcome, thank you.
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That may well be the case, although one post I read on another group suggested only 1 in 10 dogs were chipped in France. However that seems to suggest that 9 out of 10 dogs never go to a vet where they would be automatically fitted with a chip so I am not sure how reliable that information is?
However my point was really to do with my earlier post where the assumption was that the cat was owned by someone from England and I put forward the hypothesis that as the cat had either no chip or a faulty chip it was likely that it would have been impossible to get it into France from England as it would be rejected at the border. That in turn led me to question whether the cat was owned from someone from England which has in fact turned out to be correct.
David
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It’s compulsory for cats to be microchipped in UK as well, a recent law, I think it is extended to June of next year for them all to be chipped. Dogs have been compulsory since 2016. Anyone buying/rehoming a dog should get this checked. Breeders are responsible for having puppies chipped, but given all the cowboys out there, I doubt this is happening. We changed the ownership details for both our Labs when we rehomed them. Only exemptions are a vets certificate saying a dog is too I’ll to be microchipped.
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Yep. Who skipped page 2 then?😂😂😂
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I think as the cat has been reunited with its owners, perhaps a good time to close this thread.
David
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, although I thought that dogs have owners and cats, being much superior, have staff 😉.
