A cat owner who bought a GPS tracking collar to help him keep tabs on his cat ended up being led on a wild chase across East London.
But the tracking signal wasn’t coming from Andy Kindell’s cat Alex, but a from a mischievous rat that had stolen the £130 device after a fight.
Andy, 52, activated the tracker on March 2 after his year-old ginger tom Alex came limping home without his collar.Vets later told Andy that Alex’s injuries were probably from a fight with a rat.
The on-screen map showed that the trackers moving through various gardens near Andy’s home in East Ham, east London, but when married dad-of-two to go to the locations shown on the device’s tracker, there was nothing there.
Andy explained : "Alex didn't have it on and that's when I looked at the app and saw it in a different road and thought I would just go and get it in the morning so I closed the app.
"When I woke up I went to get the collar and that's when I realised something wasn't right.
"At first I thought some silly sausage had put it on their cat.
"I went to a neighbour's garden where it said it was there was nothing in their garden.
"Just then, the app showed it go into a different garden and across the road."
"I thought I was going mad, Andy said. "I could see this GPS signal crossing the road but there was nothing in front of me.
"I saw the app said the GPS signal was weak and that's when it occurred to me that it was underground.
"The only conclusion I have is that I'm mad or it's a rat in the drains. It's the last thing I expected.
"It might have eaten it, some rats are really big so it could be possible."
"He's had a run in with a rat and was bitten on his right paw," added Andy. "I didn't know this until we took him to the vet.
"He's lost that fight and he's lost that tracker."
Andy watched the tracker racing around under ground for three days, until eventually its battery gave out.
Its final location was an intersection of drains and roads a few streets away where rats "mostly like to hang out".
"What I could not get my head around was the speed of the thing," he said.
"I still find it difficult to believe.”
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