Microchip Implant Brings Cat Home

Call it Ted's excellent adventure, with a high-tech twist: A cat with an ID microchip implanted under his skin was returned to his owner 10 years after he jumped out a window and vanished.

Chris Inglis' sleek, black feline, Ted, was fitted with the chip back when the technology was still new in the early 1990s. But he was gone without a trace for a full decade before someone found him this week.

Ted — named for Keanu Reeves' character in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" — was brought to the Peninsula Humane Society's animal shelter, which tracked down Inglis despite outdated information on the chip. The cat was found about 13 miles south of where Inglis used to live in Burlingame.

Ted wandered off but returned shortly after Inglis moved, so the financial consultant had a microchip implanted in the cat. Then Ted wandered off again.

When the pair reunited Wednesday, the cat "rubbed his face on my hand, climbed right up and started purring," Inglis said. "It's pretty monumental. It's almost surreal."

Where Ted spent all those years remains a mystery, but it appeared someone had been taking care of him.

Inglis remembers that one of the things he and Ted liked to do was cruise around in his car. On their way home from the shelter, Inglis said Ted "put his front paws on the dashboard," just like in the old days.

In the 10 years the Inglises spent apart from Ted, reports The Mercury News, they have raised two daughters, Jerusha, 9, and Kasey, 6; moved into a four-bedroom, and gotten a new cat, a dog, two geckos and one crayfish.

Now they have Ted, too.