An Adventure

Last night I received a call from someone saying he had a black cat in his apartment and he thought it might be India. He said it had green eyes and looked just like the picture in the Craigslist ad. I asked about the kink in her tail, and he said he was not really comfortable around cats and didn’t want to handle it. We were just finishing dinner so I said I would come over and see if it was India. I didn’t think it was wise to go to a strange apartment all alone, so I called Holly and asked if she would go with me. The kids stayed home with Geoffrey.

We got to the apartment and the guys who lived there were very nice and showed us the room where the cat was hiding. She had wedged herself between the hamper and the wall. She seemed too small to be India, though after two months she could have lost weight. But I felt her tail and it was straight and true. It wasn’t India.

Nevertheless, we couldn’t just leave her here. She was a very sweet and well socialized kitty, but she was confused and a bit nervous. She wanted to hide. We persuaded her to go into the cat carrier that I brought. We thought we would just take her outside and then let her out and she would go home.

That’s not what happened. We took her to the end of the walkway, and she bolted back to the apartment where we had just captured her and cried pitifully at the door to be let back in. We began to wonder if she had lived there before. We couldn’t just abandon her because the instant the guys opened the door, she’d run inside and we’d be right back where we started. Holly and I talked about taking her to the Humane Society to be scanned for a microchip, but they weren’t going to be open until Wednesday. We decided that if we took her the best place for her to stay would be the unused chicken house, since nothing could get in to get her. We didn’t like it, but since we all had cats it seemed like the best we could do under the circumstances.

We put her back in the carrier and knocked on the door to tell the guys what we were going to do so if they saw any missing cat signs that they would know what happened and where to direct the person. Before we did that, he knocked on a couple of doors in the immediate area to see if she had escaped. We met some nice people who were not missing any cats.

We were about to go when someone ran up to Holly asking if she had seen a black cat. Holly pointed to us and said it was right there. The girl was so happy she could hardly believe it. She peeked into the carrier and there was her beloved missing kitty. She said the cat had bolted when she open the car door after a trip to see her family. She had been out of her mind worrying about her. “You don’t even know,” she said and gave us all hugs.

“Actually,” I replied gently, “I do know. My cat has been missing for two months.” We explained that the guys called me because they saw my ad on Craigslist. She said she could imagine how awful that must be. Her kitty was only gone for two hours.

We walked her home with Minnie Mouse in the carrier. We went into her apartment and closed the door and released the kitty. We got to meet her other kitty, a pure white cat to go with her pure black cat. Yin and Yang.

There were four very happy people. The two guys had a cat-free apartment. The lady had her cat back. Holly didn’t have a cat in her hen house. Almost everyone had a happy ending. Almost.

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