When Ally was chosen I received an email from Karen the day before to let me know.

In the email she mentioned that usually they do INVITE the purrson of the COTD to join Pet Talk, when they send them the email that their pet has been chosen, but in my case I was already a member

Maybe part of the problem is the time delay between submitting and being chosen - peoples email addresses etc change. (I know that I contacted the lady with the Bahraini Dilmun which was COTD in August, and she replied back that they are no longer in Bahrain, and gave me the cat's new owner's details.

Maybe Karen can pop over here and clarify how it works?