By Cara Sulieman
A LITTLE girl who lost her pet cat on the same day as her doting granddad’s funeral has been re-united with the wayward kitty after a frantic fortnight long search.
Heather Wilson, five, was left distraught when Bo disappeared the same day that Barrie Wilson was laid to rest.
It was a double blow because he was the one who gave her the pet as a birthday present.
But a fortnight later the moggie turned up at the Scottish SPCA centre in Dunfermline in Fife where staff were able to track him back to the Wilson family for a surprise reunion.
“Doubly upsetting”
The eight-month-old kitten was a birthday present for Heather from Barrie, making the double loss even harder.
To shield Heather from the pain, her mum Diane, 30, didn’t tell her about Bo’s disappearance until a few days after it happened.
Diane said: “It was a very bad time for her, doubly upsetting.
“She was very upset and I didn’t tell her straight away because I felt she couldn’t take the news of her granddad and the loss of her cat on the same day. I kept saying Bo had gone out early this morning.
“She’s an only child so we got him as a little buddy for her.
Search party
“She was so excited when she got him – she made a book about him and took it to school where it was read out to her classmates.”
When the schoolgirl was finally told that Bo had run away, she made posters to put up around Rosyth and the whole family went out to search for him.
Kids in the street also rallied round – joining the search party and asking every day if the moggy had returned.
Diane said: “It was quite sweet that they all cared and helped.”
But Bo was found three miles away from home in Dunfermline.
Scottish SPCA
It was a journey that would have taken him across several busy roads and the dangerous A90 dual carriageway.
And once in the town, the clever kitty made his way straight to the right people to help him – the Scottish SPCA wildlife centre.
By luck, an ambulance driver from the charity found the feline sitting on their doorstep.
Mairi Stewart explained that Bo wouldn’t leave her alone.
She said: “Bo just wouldn’t stay away from my van and even jumped in twice.
“People often think cats are strays when they are in fact just roaming near to home, but Bo did seem quite agitated and I thought he’d perhaps been dumped at our centre.”
Microchip
As part of the usual procedure, the centre scanned Bo for a microchip and were able to find out his owner and home address.
Mairi said: “This shows the value of having your pet micro-chipped. It could be the best few pounds a pet owner ever spends.”
But that wasn’t the end of Bo’s journey – he had to be taken to the charity’s Edinburgh centre to stay overnight until Diane could pick him up the next morning.
And rather than telling Heather that her beloved pet was the back, her mum just told her there would be a surprise waiting for her when she got home.
The delighted schoolgirl was overjoyed to see her companion, and said she had missed him waking her up in the mornings.
Hungry kitty
She said: “He doesn’t get to sleep with me on school nights, just at weekends. But he comes in every morning to try and wake me up.”
And Bo has been eating Diane out of house and home since his return, wolfing down three bowels of dried food and some Rice Krispies in the first day.
Diane said: “He’s been so hungry since he got back. I’ve run out of cat food already and he’s only been back for one night!
“But Heather is so excited to have him back – she couldn’t sleep last night.
“I think we’ll keep him in the house for a few weeks until he settles back in, we don’t want him going missing again.”
