Cat Missing 5 Years Turns Up on Offshore Oil Rig

Dexter has been returned home to Scotland
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 26, 2022 3:34 PM CDT
Cat Missing 5 Years Turns Up on Offshore Oil Rig
Stock photo of an oil rig, likely cat-less.   (Getty Images)

A missing cat turned up in the most impossible-seeming of places: on an offshore oil rig in the North Sea. How the cat—whose microchip revealed him to be named Dexter and who had been missing for five years—ended up off the coast of Scotland is only partly a mystery. The Guardian reports he was found in a shipping container that had come from Peterhead. The cat is believed to be a stray that roamed the area around Peterhead prison in Aberdeenshire; the prison staffers who fed him called him One-eyed Joe.

How he ended up in the container is unclear, but Dexter was reunited with his owner after the oil rig workers contacted the Scottish SPCA on Thursday, fed him chicken from the canteen, and had him flown to Aberdeen on Friday. The BBC describes Bridie Dorta as "delighted" to have him back, though unsurprisingly "quite shocked." Dorta described the cat as a longtime "wanderer" who "went away a few years ago and we never heard anything about him since. We never expected him to end up back here." (This cat was thought to be killed with its owner but turned up three years later.)

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