A missing cat, who is a regular fixture at a Cardiff supermarket and 4,000 strong fan club, has been found 25 miles away in Brynmawr. Clover, better known as the 'Sainsbury's cat', has been regularly frequenting the supermarket in Thornhill for a number of years and has earned a cult following online.
In May, a post on her Facebook fan page said the "beloved" pet was missing and had not been seen for a number of days. Clover's owner, who did not want to be named, told WalesOnline at the time that although the feline had mistaken for a stray and taken by people a few times before, her most recent disappearance was "really unusual" and "concerning".
But thanks to the efforts of a volunteer group dedicated to searching for missing pets in Cardiff and surrounding areas, Clover was finally discovered about ten days later in the early hours of Tuesday (May 31) morning and returned safe and well to her owner. Jenna Jones, 37, runs the non-profit group with her best friend Tracy Evans, along with ten other volunteers. The group has over 3,600 members who share reports and sightings of missing pets so that Jenna and her team can track them down. You can read all our Cardiff stories here.
Late on Monday (May 30) night, one of the members shared a photo of a sighting of Clover in Brymawr and Jenna went about doing some "investigatory work" to figure out the cat's exact location. She spent two hours comparing the picture with an online map, eventually narrowing it down to a residential area that was a 45-minute drive away.
Knowing they would have to work as quickly as possible, Jenna raced to the location with three of volunteers. "Because if she moved from there, we might not have got another sighting for however long - we might never have got another sighting."
he said it wasn't a place she would have expected Clover to end up, and said it is the furthest distance she had had to travel to retrieve a missing pet. "I can't believe how far away she was," she said. It was so far out of the way - it wasn't in an area she was likely to be found. In the past we've found them at Aldi depots, for example."
"As soon as I went up there, I started shaking Dreamies and she came out from one of the gardens," she said. "The funny thing is, she never used to come to me at Sainsbury's but last night she came straight out. It was probably about half an hour that she was located and in my car."
Jenna admitted she "couldn't believe" she'd located the famous pet, but said she had been hopeful on the drive up. "I knew that if I go up there with Dreamies, if she is still in that area, I will find her and she will come to me. Because I know what she's like - she will come for Dreamies no matter what time. Even if she's full, she'll still come out for them."
She scanned the cat and traced the chip to confirm it was Clover. It was 1am by the time they found her and too late to get hold of the owners, so the cat spent the night at one of the volunteer's houses, before she was returned home later in the morning.
"I suspect she'd been taken up there by somebody. I don't know though - I can't prove that. But her collar had been removed and it would suggest that somebody had taken her up there," said Jenna.
"[Clover's owners] were absolutely over the moon. They were absolutely ecstatic. They thought that they would never find her again. They thought that something had happened and they were so pleased to find that she was not only found but she was alive and very well as well."
An update on Clover's Facebook page on Tuesday announcing that she'd been found received 2,000 likes and hundreds of comments. One person commented it was "the best news another", while another said "I wish Clover could talk and share her story".
Explaining how her own Facebook group came about, Jenna said the page was initially set up about three years ago to locate a cat called Tiger who had gone missing from West Wales. She led the search to find and reunite him with his owners, and he was eventually found in Llanishen.
She decided to take the group further with Tracy, and since then it has gone from "strength to strength", evolving into an avenue where owners can seek help to locate their lost pets completely free of charge. She estimates they reunite on average at least ten animals with their owners per month.
Jenna, who volunteers for Cardiff-based animal shelter Anna's Rescue Centre and also runs hedgehog rescue in her spare time, said the initiative is all about the animals. The mum-of-two is also a full time carer for her 15-year-old son who has ADHD. She said her own pets have supported her son, particularly their cat called Charlie - which she calls his "therapy cat" - so she understands the importance animals can have in people's lives.
"Pets mean the world to us - they just make life better. I know how much pets mean to people so that's why I started the group up. It's not about anything else other than reuniting those animals with their owners, even when they've been found deceased," she said.
"I thoroughly enjoy getting all these cats, dogs - all pets - that are lost back to their owners. I've lost a pet myself before and it's heart-breaking. You don't know where they are, you're afraid that they could have died." To sign up for our CardiffOnline newsletter, click here.
