Quite an amusing piece of news, but, a cat is thought to have survived for a period of two months in a shipping container only by gulping down spiders and licking up condensation.
As Monty first disappeared back in July, owners Beverley and Paul Chapman, from Cornwall, UK, thought little about it. The moggie would regularly wander around casually and visit seven or eight-second homes
But when one of these second homes said mentioned of his disappearance for a while too, Beverley and Paul were concerned and stuck his posters and shared appeals on Facebook; and when nobody responded, they began to fear the worst.
Speaking to Cornwall Live, teacher Beverley added: “Monty is a bit of a rover – he’s very independent. He has seven or eight second homes – he spends a lot of time at Wynnstay Country Store in Helston, he loves it up there.
“There’s nothing unusual in not seeing him for a week or so, but we started thinking, ‘He’s been gone for a few days now.’
“My son got a message from one of the girls who works up at Wynnstay asking if he was okay because they hadn’t seen him for a few days. We thought that was a bit concerning, so went out calling him. This was the beginning of July.”
She continued: “You get to the point where you think he’s getting older, he could have just gone away to die. Plus he’s got the habit of getting into people’s cars and lorries.
“We were half expecting a phone call from someone saying, ‘We’ve got your Monty,’ but we didn’t hear anything. After a month to five weeks, we hoped for the best but expected the worst.
“We really had given up hope after seven weeks or so. We thought he must have been hit by a car.”
But two weeks ago, on Beverley’s first day back at work, her phone beeped with a message.
“It was a message from my friend who had tagged me in a picture on Facebook which Blackfords Removal had put up. Apparently someone had been outside their storage unit and heard a cat crying,” she said.
“We had given up hope of seeing him again. I couldn’t believe it – I texted my husband, daughter and son to tell them Monty was alive. My husband Paul came home early from work to see him.”
The container Monty spent his entire summer in is located about 200 metres from the family home, and how he got trapped there is a mystical fact and his survival chronicles is more baffling still. Beverley thinks he must have 99 lives.
She said: “We reckon he lost about two-thirds of his body weight. We think there must have been condensation inside the unit which he licked and maybe he ate spiders. We can’t think how else he would have survived.
“I don’t know how he hasn’t got killed. He’s got 99 lives, that cat. He’s got an injured leg from when he was run over by a car when he was a kitten – I knew it was him immediately because of his leg.
“Our other cat Jasper’s nose has been put out of joint – he thought he was going to rule the roost when Monty went missing.”
Hopefully now Monty will always look on the bright side of whichever life he’s on.