Implant reunites kitty cat, owner

Jeff Benson

Manny was found whining and quivering in the DeAnza Mobile Home Park,

a precarious place indeed for a 7-month-old housecat.

He had just dodged whizzing cars “Frogger”-style across Coast

Highway -- during one of the busiest times of day.

After he was found, an animal control officer was able to reunite

him with his owner who’d left him under the supervision of a neighbor

while she packed for an out-of-state flight.

But Manny did the bulk of the traveling that day, as his owner had

to reschedule her flight.

But some believe Manny probably wouldn’t have been found at all,

if not for a tiny device implanted between his shoulder blades months

ago.

The cat had a microchip implanted before he was adopted, according

to Animal Network of Orange County founder DiAnna Pfaff-Martin. It’s

become protocol for many animal control officers to scan each animal

they find for computerized microchips implanted under the skin, she

said.

“It’s not cruel to implant the chips,” Pfaff-Martin said.

“It’s a painless, simple procedure. We [at the Animal Network of

Orange County] go to the expense of [implanting microchips in] every

animal.”

Officers scan an animal’s shoulders in an X pattern, she said. The

owner’s information pops up if an animal has an implant. If it

doesn’t, the battery-operated scanner reads “No ID found.”

Animal shelters are rarely able to reunite animals with their

owners immediately, she said, but because he had a chip, Manny was

one of those rarities.

Pfaff-Martin said the Animal Control Network now implants the chip

between the shoulder blades of every animal it finds so lost animals

can more easily be reunited with their owners.

“The microchips would save so many lives and allow people to feel

safe because they’d know their pets are taken care of,” Pfaff-Martin

said.

“They also prove ownership.”

Two companies -- AVID Microchip Identification Systems of Norco

and New Jersey-based Schering-Plough -- are the only ones that

produce the 125kHz microchips, which are about the same size as a

grain of rice, according to St. Louis veterinarian Dan Knox, who

began working for AVID three years ago.

A tiny radio transmitter is encased inside biocompatible glass,

and the entire product fits inside a hypodermic needle, he said.

“The signal bounces back from the microchip and produces a number

trackable to our database and to the shelter that produced it,” Knox

said.

“All we ask is that people keep their personal information up to

date. It’s just so amazing sometimes how quickly it works if the data

in the system is correct.

“Sometimes the owner is able to pick up the animal by midnight the

same night.”

The technology has been used on millions of pets nationwide,

including horses and birds, he said.

Orange County Animal Care Center in Orange and the Irvine Animal

Care Center have already “adopted” the microchip procedure,

Pfaff-Martin said.