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then at least I would stand a chance of getting him back again if a vet could scan him and get my details from the national database. I made the appointment for the very next day.
    In the morning, I gave him a talking to as I got myself ready. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘This is for your own good. You’re a bit of a wanderer, aren’t you?’ He looked up at me as if he understood every word. ‘Well, it looks like I can’t do much about that, but I can make sure that you can find your way back to me if you ever get lost.’ My tone softened as I gazed at this cat I already loved so much. ‘Oh, Casper, please try to stay close to home. I don’t want to lose you.’
    I took Casper into the surgery and plopped him down on the table to have him scanned. ‘He’s chipped already,’ said the vet.
    ‘What?’ I shrieked. I hadn’t expected that and would have thought the cat rescue people would have given me that information when I took him home.
    The vet asked me what I was going to do, but it seemed quite clear to me: Casper wasn’t my cat. There was somebody out there, distraught that their cat had been missing for some time, possibly assuming that he was dead. ‘I have to find out who he’s registered to,’ I said. ‘And I’ll have to give him back, won’t I?’
    I went home with a heavy heart. Casper scooted out of his basket and went upstairs without a care in the world, as I threw myself down on the sofa and wondered what I would do without him. He had already become such a big part of our lives that I couldn’t bear to think about giving him up. It would undoubtedly be the right thing to do and I just had to focus on that.
    I rang Cats Protection as soon as I felt able to. After I’d told them what had happened and given them the registration number the vet had found, the woman from Cats Protection called the company that keeps all the details. The time passed very slowly as I waited to hear what they’d learned. Within thirty minutes, she rang me back with a request that delighted me, but which perplexes me to this day. ‘Sue, please keep him,’ she pleaded. ‘There’s no way he can go back to the place he came from; it would be heartbreaking. Please, will you let him stay with you?’
    Of course this was what I’d wanted all along. I loved Casper dearly, but what was going on? All I could get from her was that he’d been living in a terrible environment and Cats Protection couldn’t allow him to go back there. I got the impression that Casper had escaped from whatever horrible life he’d led and lived rough for a while before being taken to the rescue centre by some kind person ten months before I re-homed him.
    I was delighted by the news that Casper would officially be mine. The Cats Protection lady said that the details on the chip records would be changed immediately to reflect the change in ownership. From that point, I felt that Casper was genuinely mine, but I often wondered what sort of life he must have had.
    As time went on, we found out more about him: how he seemed unafraid of traffic, how much he loved cars and lorries and how dogs left him totally unfazed. I picked up a few other hints from the cat rescue lady, and when I pieced it all together, the most likely scenario seemed to be that he had lived with a travelling community. By saying this, I’m not casting aspersions on people who choose that lifestyle, but if Casper had been moved from pillar to post, then it wouldn’t have been the best environment for him, but it would explain why he had no fear of other animals and why he was drawn to vehicles. Still, as with so many of my cats, I would never know the full story. I would simply have to ensure that while he was with me I gave him – and them – the best life possible and didn’t dwell on the past.
    I wondered where Casper went. There would be days when he stayed nearby and would come as soon as I called – or when he got a whiff of turkey roll – but there were other times