Happy Check the Chip Day! This heartwarming reunion story is one more reason to celebrate

Rachael Jones will never forget the day she lost her “sassy” cat, Quazi—or the day they were reunited.

Around 4 a.m. on April 8, 2023, Jones woke up to her sister frantically telling her their Colorado apartment building was on fire and they had to get out. Jones wouldn’t leave without Quazi, who she found hiding under her bed in terror.

She cradled her beloved cat to her chest and made for the balcony, trying to shield both Quazi and her face from the thick smoke that made it challenging to breathe or see.

Her sister jumped from their third-floor balcony and joined neighbors and onlookers below. Jones could feel Quazi’s heart beating rapidly as she told him she loved him before tossing him down to a neighbor holding out a towel to try to catch Quazi.

Quazi landed on the towel—then immediately jumped off and raced away, disappearing into the dark.

Jones leapt to safety and survived the tragic fire that killed one person and hospitalized multiple others. And then, for six long months, she tried to find Quazi.

“I am so glad he was microchipped,” she said. “It gave me hope knowing if someone found him and took him in, they would find he had a chip and an owner who’s missing him.”

Thankfully, that’s exactly what happened. A Good Samaritan found Quazi and brought him to the Leslie A. Malone Center, the main animal shelter run by the nonprofit Dumb Friends League, a 112-year-old animal welfare organization in Denver, Colo.

Per the protocol for every stray who enters the shelter, the team scanned Quazi and used AAHA’s free Universal Pet Microchip Lookup Tool to find the microchip registry company where Quazi was registered. With the contact information provided by the registry, they could then start calling and emailing his owner (which they’ll do for five days for chipped strays). They also shared Quazi’s photo on the “Lost & Found Pets” section of the shelter’s website.

The day after the center scanned Quazi’s microchip, an elated Jones and her family came to the shelter for a joyful reunion.

“Finding Quazi was one of the best days of my life,” Jones said. “I’ll never forget the pure joy I felt when I got to hold him in my arms again. I love that cat to the moon and beyond.”

Especially important for cats

Jessica Nett, director of operations at the Malone Center, loved witnessing their touching reunion at the shelter.

“It was pretty phenomenal,” she recalled.

Nett said pet reunions are always incredibly happy but less common with cats, who often hunker down and hide for a significant amount of time when lost. Additionally, when cats aren’t microchipped, it makes identification much more difficult. For instance, Nett has had numerous long conversations with people looking at photos of, say, six black cats and trying to determine which one is their missing pet.

“A microchip is definitive,” she said. “The more we can spread education around microchipping, the better. We hear a lot of misconceptions about what a microchip is. It’s a misunderstood technology.”

As veterinarians know, one of the most common misconceptions is that microchips provide GPS tracking of pets. (As Nett likes to quip, “Please patent that technology. It can make you a lot of money.”)

Effective, but there’s room to improve

The biggest problem occurs when pet owners don’t register their pet’s microchip number with a microchip registry (such as PetLink or AKC Reunite) and/or keep their contact information up-to-date. Nett said “quite often” stray animals enter the shelter with microchips that aren’t linked to their owners’ current contact information, which is heartbreaking.

And unfortunately, it’s a situation that happens nationwide.

In fact, research released last year from the nonprofit Human Animal Support Services (HASS), an animal welfare project of the nonprofit Austin Pets Alive! in Austin, Texas, analyzed data from 17 U.S. shelters and found microchipped pets are three times more likely to be reunited with their families—but that only 18% (roughly one in six pets) were actually chipped.

“The main takeaway is that microchips are an effective way of getting pets home, but there’s still room for improvement,” said Amanda Foster, assistant director of implementation and analysis at HASS.

There’s an urgency to that improvement, since shelters nationwide are in “crisis” with more animals coming in than are being adopted, she said. Quickly reuniting a stray with their family frees up kennel space for other pets in need.

In the first half of 2024, 56% of pets entering shelters were strays, according to the 2024 mid-year analysis from the nonprofit Shelter Animals Count, which maintains a database of U.S. sheltering statistics.

So Foster is grateful for Check the Chip Day on August 15, and hopes veterinary teams will do all they can to increase microchip awareness on the special day as well as year-round for the good of pets, people and animal shelters.

She added that animal hospitals can also help by partnering with local shelters to learn which zip codes report the most lost pets, offering low-cost microchipping events in their communities, and sharing microchipping resources in languages other than English, such as Spanish or Vietnamese, depending on local demographics.

“If it’s just 18% of pets that we’re seeing (enter shelters) that are microchipped, and the majority of pets are coming in lost, then there’s just a lot of opportunity to get more home,” Foster said.

In the meantime, Jones delights in having her cat Quazi back at home, where he enjoys rolling onto his back to show off his belly and other silly, playful antics.

“I’m so glad I was able to find him after six long months of missing him,” she said. “He will always be my miracle kitty!”

On August 15, celebrate Check the Chip Day by scanning pets for microchips and reminding clients to not only microchip their pets, but keep their contact information up to date with their registry. After scanning a pet, you can use AAHA’s free Universal Pet Microchip Lookup Tool to enter the microchip number and obtain a list of microchip registries to contact for the owner’s contact information.

Award-winning journalist Jen Reeder is former president of the Dog Writers Association of America. Visit her online at jenreeder.com. 

Photo credit: Rachael Jones

Disclaimer: The views expressed, and topics discussed, in any NEWStat column or article are intended to inform, educate, or entertain, and do not represent an official position by the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) or its Board of Directors.