PHOTO
Chase the wandering - but not lost - cat has become a celebrity in central Christchurch.
The black feline has garnered thousands of followers on social media, with members of the public sending in their sightings to the ‘Has anybody seen Chase?’ Facebook page.
The page is filled with photos of the two-and-a-half-year-old cat taken around the central business district.
He mostly pops up around Victoria Square, Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre, the Bridge of Remembrance, and the Avon River.
Chase, who was adopted as an SPCA-rescue cat, has also been spotted far from his home on Salisbury St, sitting inside the Chiwahwah Mexican Cantina Bar on Oxford Tce.
Chase’s owner Nick White calls him “Ōtautahi’s greatest urban explorer”.
White started the Facebook page, which has amassed 3800 followers since May, to stop people getting concerned he was missing.


“He’d been ‘rescued’ seven or eight times,” White said.
“People kept thinking he was lost and taking him to vets.
“Then we got the embroidered collar with his Facebook URL on it, and it’s snowballed from there.”


White and his family “weren’t terribly surprised” to see Chase gain fame as “the Meta algorithm loves cats!”
He said it was “great that he has so many folks looking out for him”.
Some of the messages sent to White include tales of Chase being rescued from the former Chief Post Office building in Cathedral Square, and wandering into the convention centre where he needed to be let out by security staff.

