At least the old boy made it home

George died last week.

The long-lost Santa Rosa cat was 17 years old and his legacy just may improve lives of pets everywhere.

George was one of the first cats ever to be microchipped. He vanished from his Santa Rosa home in mid-1995 and last month made history -- and national headlines -- when a staffer at Sonoma County's pound scanned a sick, scrawny, old cat and detected the chip.

Information imbedded in it led authorities to Frank Walburg and Melinda Merman. They wept to get their George back after an absence of close to 14 years.

"He had a lot of great days" since his homecoming, Melinda said. But a vet discovered George had cancer.

Frank and Melinda did the loving thing a few days ago when they had him gently put down at home.

Melinda said, "We hope something really big and positive comes out of this." It will, if more pet owners have their animals microchipped and if those chips help multitudes of Georges to get back home.

WHICH IS MORE AMAZING? That two Santa Rosa women each placed about $5,000 in envelopes in recent days and then lost them?

Or that two good men found the cash and did the honorable thing?

First story: Joan Halsey, 65, cashed in some savings bonds to pay for urgently needed repairs to her mobile home. On the way home from the bank she stopped at the Safeway on north Mendocino Avenue.

Shortly after arriving home she discovered she no longer had the envelope containing a bit more than $5,000 in cash. Her heart sank.

Back at the Safeway, shopper Deepinder Sekhon noticed something on the floor. "I thought, oh, somebody lost their grocery list."

Deepinder picked up an envelope full of cash. He took it to a Safeway assistant manager and predicted that that a hysterical person soon would arrive at the service counter.

Minutes later, a sobbing Joan Halsey appeared.

Her hero, Deepinder, a Wachovia Securities financial adviser, advises that no one should ever carry such a large sum of cash.

Second story: What's this, postal employee Rich Johnston thought as he gathered outgoing mail from a bin at Winding Rose, a florist/gift shop and contract post office.

It was a blank envelope containing one, two, three -- 50 $100 bills. Rich took it directly to a supervisor at the post office, who locked it in a vault.

The frantic woman who claimed the money said she'd accidentally mailed it with a stack of letters. I don't know who she is but, I assume that about now she's filled with warm, festive feelings for the USPS.

ZEROES TOO MANY: Joe Milan had a perfect chance to help rescue Santa Rosa from its budget crisis, but he let it pass.

Milan (MY-lan) phoned City Hall last week and used a credit card to pay his $44.63 water bill. The next day, a woman from the Utilities Department phoned back to say there'd been a bit of an error and she needed to process his payment again.

What sort of error? "I really had to ask her two or three times," Milan said. At last she came out with it.

Instead of $44.63, she said, the city had charged his card $44,630.

Hello? Mr. Milan? Hello?

IN RELATED NEWS, Louise Hanlon received an alarming call from her credit card company.

Somebody was racking up fraudulent charges on the Santa Rosan's account. Among the charges was a purchase from FTD, the flower delivery service.

A bit later a knock came at Hanlon's door. It was delivery of a dozen Gerbera daisies, from FTD!

"Someone steals my credit card information and has the nerve to send me flowers," she said.

She won't keep the daisies around long. They're pretty enough but, ewww, they give her the creeps.

(Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.)