Pet cat spends 3 weeks in recycling centre after hopping into neighbour’s van
A mother-of-two said it was a “miracle” that her family’s cat was found alive and well after being missing for three weeks in a recycling centre. Gemma Hutchinson-James lives in Weybridge with her two children and pet cat, Opie. On September 25, however, the two-year-old tabby jumped into a neighbour’s van who was on his way to Shepperton Community Recycling Centre – four miles away.
On arriving at the centre, the neighbour opened the van door and Opie ran out. Gemma said: “The neighbour wasn’t sure whose cat it was but I think mine is the only tabby down the road and so we realised quite quickly it was Opie. READ MORE: Ashford and Shepperton community centres open for families to stay warm this winter
“From that day onwards I was backwards and forwards from the tip but as you can imagine it’s such a busy, noisy and hectic place that it felt like such a mammoth task. I thought how am I going to get him back?” The 38-year-old put up appeal posters at the centre and a few days later the site’s manager called her to say that Opie had been spotted.
Gemma praised the centre’s workers – such as Mark, Adam and Trevor – and said they were “amazing all the way through”. They regularly gave her phone updates on fresh sightings and allowed her early access onto the site. Gemma said: “But nobody could catch him – every time someone went near he ran away.
And this went on for three weeks.” She eventually contacted Surrey Missing Pet Support C.I.C. through Facebook. The charity organised the setting up of wildlife cameras and bait traps inside the centre to catch Opie. Gemma, who works as a trauma and orthopaedic nurse at St Peter’s Hospital, said after three weeks she had given up hope of finding him – but that all changed on October 12.
She said: “I just got this frantic phone call at 11.30pm at night saying ‘I’ve got him! I’ve got him! Vickie, from the charity, had sat there all evening waiting for him.
I just couldn’t believe it.”
Amelie with her pet cat Opie
Opie was particularly important to Gemma’s 11-year-old daughter, Amelie. She said: “It was just horrible – each day Amelie was saying to me there are lots of machines there and he’s going to be really scared.” There were plenty of “near misses”, in fact, including Opie running out from a pile of wooden freight containers after they were smashed and nearly being pronged by a forklift truck.
Gemma added: “He must have used about 1,000 lives while he was there! “But he still managed to come home without a mark on him. The funny thing is that when he came home he just looked at me and started purring and jumped in my arms and licked me – it was really sweet.”
Mum Gemma with the staff at Shepperton Community Recycling Centre who helped her search for the missing cat (Image: Gemma Hutchinson-James)
But Opie began making “distressed” and “horrific” crying noises in between the purrs and so Gemma woke Amelie.
She said: “The only way I was going to stop this is to wake up my girl because she and the cat are so attached. “So I woke Amelie at midnight and I was crying and trying to compose myself. I told her and she ran downstairs and scooped him up and he stopped the weird crying.” Gemma said her daughter was “really overwhelmed” and kept asking to be pinched because she thought it was a dream.
The four-mile trip Opie took from his home in Weybridge to Shepperton (Image: Google Maps)
Although Opie was checked over by the vet upon his return, he is now “very clingy and scared” but Gemma said that “the fact that he is now home is like all my Christmases come at once, and for Amelie everybody knows that Opie is her boy”.
She added: “The staff at the recycling centre went above and beyond for my family and I took down some goodies for them just to say thank you. There were even humble about that saying they didn’t want anything. “I was just blown away at how lovely there were and I spoke to the site’s manager and they are making a GBP500 donation to the charity as well – incredible.”
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