A pet owner has shared how she was forced to call the police after a microchip firm refused to tell her who had inadvertently 'cat-napped' her beloved moggy.
Beryl Edwards, 65, scoured the neighbourhood for two-year-old Fred when he vanished from her home in Market Drayton, Shropshire, on August 9 last year, but there was no sign of her ginger-and-white Tom cat.
As the months passed, she had almost given up hope of ever seeing him again - until she received an email from pet microchip company Identibase last Thursday.
To her shock, they told her Fred was now living with someone who wanted to keep him as their pet, and so she needed to consent to a change of ownership on the microchip.
A "stunned" Beryl refused and told them she wanted Fred to come home, but the company declined to tell her who now had him because of GDPR data laws.
The General Data Protection Regulation is a Regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy, and has largely been retained in domestic law as the UK-GDPR after Brexit.
After feeling "completely stuck" with the company's refusal to help her, Beryl was forced to call police and report Fred as 'stolen'.
On Monday, the pair were finally reunited when officers from West Mercia Police turned up at Beryl's home with Fred after they had forced Identibase to reveal who found him.
Beryl says she is "so relieved" to have her cat home at last "where he belongs" - but contends it "should never have gone this far" and that issue could have been avoided if "someone had bothered to scan Fred's microchip when he was found".
Explaining how he ended up with a different owner after going missing, said: "Apparently he was found several weeks after he'd gone missing and was in a pretty bad state, the vet needed to remove 18 of his teeth.
"Why on earth the vet didn't scan him there and then I don't know. Instead he was dismissed as a stray and ended up living with someone else.
"It only came about who he actually was when the person who found him wanted to keep him as a pet. He was finally scanned which revealed he was mine.
Beryl is now using her own experience to warn pet owners about the difficulties of negotiating GDPR rules - and says microchipping is "not as straightforward as you think".
"It's been frustrating, I was told out of the blue that the cat that has been missing, has now been found.
"I went from absolute ecstasy to being told he's alive and well to thinking 'I can't get him.' It's been days of hell and stress.
"It was only the fact that the police got involved that I got Fred back.
She added that while she understands the need for data protection, there should be a way to minimise disruption and "time lost" in these kind of situations.
A spokesperson for West Mercia Police said: "This week we received a report from a member of the public concerned their cat may have been stolen."
Mike Jamieson, from Identibase, said: "As the UK's largest pet protection service, we are an animal welfare company first and foremost.
"We cover an enormous number of UK pets - over four million currently - and our primary interest is in the wellbeing of them and their keepers."
