Cat owners know the importance of microchipping. In fact, many shelters roll it into their adoption fees.
Peeva, a pet identification and database headquartered in New York, notes in its survey that one third of pets are reported missing in their lifetime, while more than 80% of these pets are never found. A more recent, 2018 study found that 15% of cat owners lost their pets in a five-year period, many sadly not reunited. Meanwhile, 51% of cats escaped when moving into a new house, showing how a routine life event can go suddenly wrong.
Microchips have proven to be “extremely reliable,” working “100% of the time if scanned and properly registered.” But this assumes that good Samaritans encountering ostensibly lost cats will take them to a shelter, and that, once there, animal welfare professionals have the good sense to scan for a microchip.