Cat Hitches 100-Mile Round Trip Ride with Openreach Engineer

Curiosity often gets cats into trouble and we’ve seen plenty of occasions where broadband engineers have had to fish the odd one down from a tree or UK telecoms pole. But spare a thought for Tia, the cat who took an unexpected 100-mile round trip to Coll with one of Openreach’s engineers. But it had a purr-fect ending.

Tia – a crafty looking Tortoiseshell cat (frankly all cats look a bit crafty) – actually belonged to the neighbour of Openreach’s engineer and, as we understand it, she had sneaked into Doug Craig’s (31) van as he loaded up in Oban at 4am. The bad news for Tia, who promptly hid in the back as Doug loaded everything up, is that she was about to embark on a 3-hour ferry crossing to Arinagour in the Inner Hebrides (Scotland).

The village of Arinagour sits on the remote Isle of Coll, which is home to a tiny population of around 200 people, and is probably quite a bit different from Tia’s usual haunts. Doug had been tasked with taking the lengthy trip to Coll in order to fix a broadband fault for the island’s fire station. It was only several hours later, after Doug had fixed the wiring problem, that he spotted his uninvited feline guest.

Doug got a message to his mum back in Oban to let his neighbours, Elyse and Martin Hamilton, know where Tia was, so they and kids Stanley (7) and Beatrix (5) wouldn’t worry. He then had to stock up on tuna and biscuits because the next ferry wasn’t due until the following day (island life). While Doug slept in a tent under the stars for the night, Tia bedded down in the back of the van (and we suspect probably left the odd “gift“).

Openreach engineer Doug said:

“It was a last minute trip due to an urgent data fault at the voluntary fire station on Coll. I was working for a few hours before I realised Tia was there.

I’d noticed my tool bag was all hairy and thought it was really odd. I got the fright of my life when I saw two eyes shining out from the back of the van.

At first I thought a Coll cat had sneaked in but then I got a closer look and recognised her from home. I thought ‘Oh no, I’ve cat-napped my neighbours’ pet!’

I’ve heard of other curious cats climbing into colleagues’ vans on occasion – but I’ve never heard of one that went to sea on a 100-mile round trip.”

The good news is that Tia has now been reunited with her owners, while Doug will probably spend the rest of his career taking extra special care not to collect any wayward moggies on his travels.