He was found in a garden in Northern Ireland in the Armagh County this week, but when volunteers at the Cats Protection traced back the owners of the cat, whom they would call Ozzie, they learned that his humans were actually all the way in Sydney, Australia, according to Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).
Ozzie's case has the Irish volunteers baffled. What's even more surprising is that Ozzie's microchip indicated that he was born in 1989, which means that he's already almost 26-years-old. Cats generally live until they are 15-years-old.
Then they learned that Ozzie is actually named Tigger and that his microchip was attached to him back in 2000 in Sydney, according to Daily Mail.
Described as "gentle and affectionate" and "very thin but incredibly handsome" by the volunteers, the cat was taken in by Gillian McCullen, the coordinator of Cats Protection. "I responded to a call from a member of the public who was concerned about a poorly stray cat that had been hanging around her garden for several days." McCullen said. "The poor cat was starving but obviously had been cared for in the past because it was wearing a collar," she further shared.
The group posted Ozzie's photos and his story on Armagh Cats Protection's Facebook account, where some users said that the microchip may have been old or defective.
The volunteers further assessed that Tigger/Ozzie may have been brought to London in 2004 by its owners, as the microchip also indicated that he ended up in a pet clinic as a stray cat around that time.
The Armagh chapter is already coordinating with Australian animal rights group to help Tigger/Ozzie reunite with his owners, SMH reported.
