22/04/2026
This is Vasya. He has been missing for a whole year.
But now he's BACK!! 🎉
Settle in for Vasya's dramatic story...
The story began three years ago, when a charming, fluffy kitten turned up at his owner Marina's house. He was a bit wild, and they thought this might be down to some possible trauma - he was very afraid of men even though he trusted women.
Vasya was a wanderer. He began to wander quite regularly. But he would always come back to his home and food. Until one day he didn't.
As the days turned into months without Vasya, Marina and her family naturally assumed the worst had happened.
She said: "The only thing that gave us hope was that he had a microchip, so even if something had happened, he could be identified via the chip.
"We thought of him very often, but after six months we thought that Vasya would never return. Our home was empty and quiet without a cat, and a kitten named Marthy appeared."
But then on the evening of 9 April 2026, Marina received a message from IdentiBase saying that his microchip had been scanned at Cats Protection Brighton and Hove.
"I simply couldn’t catch my breath. I reread the message and couldn’t believe it was true. I told my children and my husband, and they all asked the same question: Is he alive? Yes, yes, he’s alive!"
"But the second question I was already asking myself was: what condition is he in? Is he all right?"
"The next morning, Katie, a volunteer from Cats Protection Brighton and Hove rang me: he’d been visiting a nearby house, begging for food. And that very morning, with the help of the lovely and kind volunteer Katie and the caring owner of that house, Ollie, Vasya was put into a carrier and I brought him home!"
Marina added: "I still can’t quite get used to the fact that Vasya is home - we’d given up hope of ever seeing him alive again."
"We have so many questions about what happened to him during his year away that we will never know the answers to, but what we do know for certain is that without the microchip and Cats Protection, we would never have been reunited with Vasya!"
📣 Cats Protection is holding a microchipping event this Saturday at Southdown Veterinary Centre in Hove. You can get your cat chipped for only £10. Email us at [email protected] to book your place now! 📣
