After losing a cat during the holidays in 2007, Theresa Jear decided to take her other feline, Sasha, to the San Francisco Animal Care and Control to get implanted with a microchip.

“I can’t bear to lose another cat,” she said. “My cats are my children.”

The identification microchips, which are about the size of a grain of rice, are a helpful way of identifying a pet if they get lost, according to Friends of San Francisco Animal Care and Control.

When a pet is found by the SFACC, employees run a scanner over the pet to look up the identification, said SFACC president Jane Tobin.

“We scan the pet to look up the identification that is inside the microchip and call up the owner to let them know their pet is here,” she said.

Owners register their pets’ ID online in case the pet runs away to a different town. If a pet is not from San Francisco, the SFACC can look up the animal’s owners on national databases from online sites including petlink.com, said Tobin.

There are a few safety precautions that go with microchipping a pet. “The chip can fall out if it is not injected into the pet properly,” Tobin said.

“And some pets can be allergic to the chip, but other than that — there’s no harm in microchip IDs.”

If a natural disaster hit San Francisco, it would be easier to find pets if they were microchipped, according to Deb Campbell, outreach coordinator for SFACC.

“I’ve noticed more people getting their pets microchipped since Katrina hit New Orleans,” Campbell said. “A lot of people lost their pets after it happened and many people never saw their pets again.”

According to Hurricane Katrina Relief, over 600,000 pets were lost due to the natural disaster.

“I am sure most pet owners do not want their pets to be killed if an earthquake struck San Francisco,” Campbell said.

Microchipping pets has been around for nearly a decade, veterinarian John Steinon said as he was injecting a microchip, but he has noticed more people bringing in their pets into clinics to get it done.

“Microchip technology for pets isn’t new but the trend is growing these days,” Steinon said.

SFACC put together a free microchipping event on Feb. 10, during which more than 65 animals were implanted with chips. After UCLA student Jennifer Chan took her new puppy, Skyler, to get microchipped, she was pleased to find how quick the procedure was.

“It was so fast!” Chan said, “Skyler didn’t even notice she was getting the shot done.”

If pets could get microchipping done, Chan wondered if humans would get microchipped in the future.

“It would be kind of cool to see humans get these microchip IDS on their necks,” said Chan.

“Just kidding, that would be creepy.”