A pedigree cat that went missing from its home in the Flemish Brabant town of Aarschot last week has been found with its fur shaved off more than 150km away in Rekkem, a West Flemish village on the border with France. The cat, whose name is Charel, is in good health and has been reunited with its owners.
There was great joy on Saturday when Charel the cat’s owners were reunited with their beloved pet. Charel had gone missing a week earlier have been let out for a walk in woodland adjacent to his home.
The feline’s owners told VRT News that “Charel is allowed to go outside for a walk in the woods, but at the beginning of the Easter holidays he suddenly didn’t come home. An appeal on social media drew a blank. We feared he’d been hit by a car or was trapped somewhere in a cellar, until we suddenly received a phone call from a vet in Moorsele’.
The vet was Lynn Soetaert. She had been called out by customers from Rekkem a village near to the West Flemish border town of Menen.
“Apparently, that tomcat had been wandering around there for about 4 days. Eventually, they decided to take him in and bring him to me to see if he was microchipped and whether we could track down his owners.”
“I was quite surprised to find out that Charel was from Aarschot. That’s about a two-hour drive from here. Using his microchip number, I was able to confirm that he had indeed been reported missing. His owners were absolutely delighted to hear that he’d been found and came to collect him straight away.”
Possibly kidnapped
What happened to Charel remains unclear. Lynn Soetaert told VRT News that “He certainly didn’t walk all the way to Rekkem on his own. What makes the case even stranger is that he had been shaved. He had left Aarschot with a full coat of fur.”
Charel’s owners say that “There are 2 possible scenarios. Either he accidentally got into a van or a car and travelled to West Flanders that way, or he was kidnapped. Charel is a Ragdoll, a breed that’s often entered cat shows. Ragdoll cats are quite expensive. We chose that breed of cat because they’re very affectionate and child-friendly animals. You can tell straight away that he’s no ordinary street cat.”
“Maybe someone spotted him and took him away. We treat him like an ordinary cat and let him out now and then as a result, his coat isn’t pure white. Perhaps they shaved him so that his coat would grow back and be perfectly white and soft coat again.”
Charel is now recovering from his ordeal with his family.