Monty the lost cat of Khalifa City returns home after 100 days away

Unlikely return offers hope for two other missing pets mistaken for strays and rounded up by pest controllers

Jacqueline and David Appleby found their cat, Monty, but Blacky and Winnie are still missing. Pawan Singh / The National

After going missing for 100 days, the owners of Monty the wandering cat feared they would never see their beloved pet again.

But thanks to the use of technology and weeks of painstaking searches of desert wasteland across Abu Dhabi, the four-year-old rescue cat has finally been reunited with the Appleby family in Khalifa City.

Monty was one of three cats to go missing more than three months ago after they were mistaken for strays and rounded up by pest controllers.

An online appeal by Jacqueline and David Appleby encouraged other animal lovers from across Abu Dhabi to join the search via their blog — the lost boys of Khalifa City.

It was a huge relief, I had forgotten how miserable I had become over losing him

Jacqueline Appleby

The blog has been read more than 1,000 times, while a Facebook group has attracted hundreds of followers.

A breakthrough came when Abu Dhabi waste management contractor Tadweer shared GPS tracking data of pest control vehicles at the time the animals vanished.

It enabled a search party to pinpoint where Monty had been picked up.

When a woman in the group recognised Monty from a photo shared on the blog, she called the Applebys to pass on the good news.

“We had been communicating with Tadweer and they showed us GPS movements of the truck used on the morning that Monty disappeared,” said Ms Appleby.

“It stopped at the villa next door. That is when we assume Monty was picked up. He was driven 6km and dumped on a desert landscape area.

“He then covered 2.3km and walked towards an Emirati family who began feeding him in their garden.

“We found him exactly 100 days after he went missing.

Jacqueline Appleby and her husband David with their cats at their villa in Abu Dhabi. Pawan Singh / The National

“It was a huge relief, I had forgotten how miserable I had become over losing him.”

After his three-month sabbatical, a nervous Monty is readjusting to his surroundings back home.

The couple is now scouring similar GPS tracking information to locate their other two missing cats, Blacky, 10, and Winnie, three.

“It looks like Winnie was collected from Falcon Hospital and dumped at the waste ground a 10-minute drive away,” said Ms Appleby.

“We have lots of people in Shamkhah looking out for her, and we have put some flyers around with photos.

“If we had this information three months ago, none of this would have happened.

“The support we have had on social media has been phenomenal.

“With Monty coming back we have had a huge boost, our blog has really taken off and struck a chord with people.”

The experience has prompted Mr Appleby, a former soldier, to start a website to help people track lost pets.

Owners can enter the microchip numbers to check against those of lost animals handed in to vets or animal shelters across the country.

After weeks of testing, the microchipped.ae website is due to go live on Thursday and will be free to use.

“We decided to do this when we realised we couldn’t get any data from any other vets that had microchip information, as the databases were not that effective,” said Mr Appleby.

“We sent emails out to pretty much all vets in the country to get microchip numbers on our cats in the hope that someone had found one of them or taken them to a vet, without any luck.

“This website is open to any pet — cats, dogs or rabbits for example.

“Should they get lost and the animal is found, its information can be put into the website to find a match and reunite it with its owner.

“We don’t want others to go through what we have experienced.”