In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it was all Jennifer Noble and her family could do to survive in the oppressive heat and humidity of devastated Biloxi, Mississippi. During the chaos, the family cat, a Russian Blue and tabby mix named Scrub, got lost in the shuffle, escaping out an open window. The family had assumed, after five years, that Scrub was gone for good. Until one day, Ms. Noble was contacted by a Humane Society employee who had picked up a stray cat and checked its microchip. Now, five years after he first went missing, Scrub the prodigal cat is reunited with the Noble family.
“What allowed him to get away,” Jennifer Noble said, “ … with the storm, everybody knows how hot it was and there was no electricity. We had the doors and windows open. We tried to keep him in a room. It was so miserably hot.” Noble eventually let the cat out of the room, giving him freedom to roam. One day, he just never returned. “The scenery was changing every day,” explained Nobel. “I honestly think he got disoriented; that he just couldn’t find this way back.”
“This is the power of microchipping,” said Tara High, director of the Humane Society of Southern Mississippi. “There is no other way that cat would have found its family. This is a very dramatic story with a wonderful ending.”
Tags: Jennifer Noble, Biloxi, Mississippi, Scrub, cat lost 5 years ago returns home, cat lost after Katrina returns home, Hurricane Katrina, Tara High, Humane Society of South Mississippi, unusual animals, prodigal cat, cat returns after 5 years, cats, microchipping, microchip tracking