Ack! This cat continues her lifelong project of repaying love and kindness with being a real pain in the ass. She's back. And not just back any old day… she's back THE very day that I finally got myself confident enough that she was gone that I actually took the children to a cat rescue place, where we petted many a cat and considered getting a pair of kittens. I got excited about it. I mean… we went there, and we came home, and she was in the garage.
She vanished in early November. Since then, I searched high and low for her. I walked all over the place. I searched the garage as thoroughly as possible. I contacted the local animal shelters. I made these flyers and put them in mailboxes of all the adjoining properties:
SHort of contacting the pet psychic, I did everything I could to find the stupid girl. And I worried. Since then, it's been incredibly cold and miserable at times. Like, 5 degrees with a wicked wind chill, or driving rain blended with ice. And she's been out there. By herself. I wondered whether she just got wet and cold and froze to death right off the bat. Or got eaten by a coyote. Or carried off by one of the large and lethal-looking hawks we have in our woods (they can carry off a full-grown rabbit and she's no bigger). Or whether she got hit by a car and was lying dead in a ditch some where. Or whether she got taken in by a nice old lady, who didn't see my flyer. Or, or, or.
Meanwhile, as you know, we have mice issues. I can say that having many if not most of the major thoroughfares in the basement plugged up with steel wool and foam insulation seemed to really discourage them. And the new kitchen, with all the non-chewed wood slowed them down and disrupted their supply lines. But they were not technically GONE. And indeed, as prey animals, their population is designed to be preyed upon. Meaning, there could be an explosion if we had no cat whatsoever. So all this, plus a desire to bring in fresh horses, turn a new page, a new chapter in our lives, got me looking online at cat rescue sites. There they have millions of cats. What about a matching pair of half-grown kittens? Wouldn't that be nice? My mother even has a fine, highly skilled mouser to offer me also, and I was thinking about it. On the way out to Minneapolis for THanksgiving I brought up the idea to Ben (my mom said she would bring the cat to us in Minne), and he said we should rescue a cat that truly needs a home. What he didn't say was– no cat. In fact he sort of implied, Yes cat.
So yesterday I was talking on the phone with my mother when I saw the damnedest thing: Zane Gray sitting under the bird feeder?! I got off the phone, got my boots on, and darted outside within one minute. She was gone. Or was it Zane Grey? I didn't see her cropped ear or her non-tail. Last summer during her other "sabbatical" there was an identical male cat, like her in almost every way. Was it him again? I put out some cat food and waited for its return. I have noticed in the last few days, lots of cat tracks in the snow. Crossing our lawn from far away in the woods, all the way to the far woods on the other side, and also, circumnavigating the house, round and round. But that could be any cat, I figured. We have lots of feral cats around here…
SO last night after we got back from the cat shelter, visions of wonderful cats dancing in our heads, Ben came in and said, "Guess who I saw in the garage?" I said, "Was it really her? DId you see her no-tail?" He said, "Just a flash of gray." So I went out with some canned cat food, stood there and opened it noisily, talked to her and called her and meowed until I heard a faint reply from behind the wood pile. With just the slightest peep I knew it was her, and she'd come back just in time to reclaim her place as our cat, just indeed a DAY before it was usurped by arrivistes.
I coaxed her out, got her to eat, and after a little while, got her to let me pick her up and carry her in. I took her down to the basement, where it's very warm, and refilled her litter box. I settled her in and did a brief medical exam. She's skin and bones again, but she seems fine. No injuries, no obvious damage. Just… TEN WEEKS on her own in the woods for no reason whatsoever.
What an dumb kitty!
My mother has known probably hundreds of cats in her day and can't say she's seen one this dumb. "Did she walk ten feet from the house and get lost?" she asked. Maybe. And what about the basic cat protocol: when locked out, sit in front of the door and meow. Last night Ben suggested that we change her name to "Stupid Loser." But this morning took a softer line, "Maybe she really has a head injury of some kind? Maybe she was hit by a car as a kitten?" I mean, maybe the cat really is retarded. In the meantime, she's our cat again! She has at least 15 lives, many of which she wants to live with us.
My mother says that I should just tell Ben, "THis cat is unreliable. We need a back-up cat." It's true. This cat is such a flake, and not all that great of a mouser, and not all that cuddly, and tends to have the negatives without many of the positives. She does pee in closets at times, which I loathe. And many people who know us well have never seen her, she's so hidy, but only can tell we have a cat due to the snowdrifts of gray fur… I ask you.
And yet, what can we do? I gave her a bath this morning and brushed her fur all out. I've been feeding her the nicest foods and keeping her extra warm. She's our cat, and apparently plans to be our cat forever!