Scotland becomes all-scanning!

Only a matter of months ago we notified our supporters that fierce campaigning saw Wales become the first all-scanning nation in the world! All councils in Wales now have a procedure in place to scan cats found roadside, and return to owners when a microchip is found.

We promised we would continue working with all local authorities until we saw Scotland, Northern Ireland and England with the same in place, and campaigning to date has saw over 50 councils work with us to implement a scanning approach bringing the UK total of councils without a procedure in place down to just 4.

We have been campaigning in Scotland for over 2 years and successfully began working with the 15 councils who did not have a scanning procedure in place. We are over the moon to announce that number has now reached 0! ALL councils in Scotland now have a scanning procedure in place!

We were invited to the Scottish Parliament in January of last year, and have since been pushing our agenda of both reportable road collisions involving cats, along with getting councils to scan cats sadly left roadside. We are still working with the government on reportable RTAs, and do have high hopes. What we also plan to do now is work with MSPs to get a 'best practice' piece in place. We have done the hard work of getting councils to implement scanning, but there is still work to be done to make sure each and every council has an effective system in place whereby NO cats slip through the net. In addition, we also plan to work with depots within the far reaches of rural Highland who tend to collect wildlife, as opposed to domestic animals. The depots situated around the vast wilderness do not tend to find cats and have not been equipped as a result. Our plan is to work with our friends at Forth Valley Scanners to confirm the statistics we have and, where possible, we shall equip these depots - the collection of just 1 cat is enough for us to donate equipment to them, as we have others around Scotland.

CatsMatter hugely thanks all involved around Scotland for working with us to ensure cats tragically involved in road traffic accidents, who are sadly left by drivers roadside and collected by local councils, will be returned home where they belong. Owners need closure, and cats deserve to be treated with dignity in death.

One thing we must state is MICROCHIP YOUR PETS! Now all Scottish councils scan and return loved ones, this can only be possible where a microchip is present.