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Today I missed my cat greatly for some reason. I think because mygothlaundry's kitty, and shmeggee's hamster, and rhapsodie's dog. Geez. That is a lot of pets in a couple of weeks.
When I was a kid I had a gray cat named Bob. She (yes, Bob was a girl) left one day and was gone. I was in third grand and I was devastated. Then about a month later she just shows up at the door like nothing was wrong.
So maybe your Bob is out on a walkabout and will return whenever he feels like it.
Arse_hat, I'm so sorry for your worries. I hope Bob is well and just has wanderlust, and with a feral cat, it's certainly possible.
I am missing my cat Riff. He was a big-shouldered swaggerer, with a torn ear from a fight. We lived in a brambly, rural area, and Riff liked to explore the underbrush and the dark woodsy places. One winter night, he didn't come home, no mater how I whistled. The already cold weather turned breath-shatteringly frigid, and stayed there for days.
I kept waking up that night, opening the door and whistling, waiting for him to slink in. And waiting. Riff didn't come home in the night, Riff didn't come home in the morning. By then, I was quite worried; I suited up in my winter gear and tromped for bonechilling miles, whistling for him.
He didn't come.
I kept picturing Riff trapped somewhere in the cold, injured and immobile or stuck by his collar on a bramble.
I kept walking and whistling. I called all the shelters and vets in the area. I waited and wished. I walked more, every day for a week. I asked the neighbors.
No Riff.
I cried and cried, and I comforted myself palely with the thought that a death by freezing is perhaps not painful. I cried rivers for that cat, picturing him wishing for home and warmth and rescue. At the end of the week, I resigned myself to losing him...
But I kept walking and whistling, every day, every night.
And at the end of the record-breaking week-long cold snap, I opened the door to go out searching...
And there was Riff. He was fat and sleek and smug and handsome.
He had obviously holed up with a human someone who fed and petted him and kept him warm and safe, but who never bothered to look at his collar.
Bit of background. Bob showed up in the fall of 2006. He just sat in our yard looking like a skeleton. We started to feed him and he filled out just fine. I made him a house. We talked about taking him in but it took three years to acclimatize our other feral, Whitey Ford, and we did not want to set him back by bringing a new feral into the mix.
We captured, fixed and released him. He has been here ever since. He might go for a day but never longer. Lately he started bringing home another cat that looked just like a smaller version of himself. He would let the other cat eat first. Maybe he went off with the new cat. It was all very odd.
WooHoo! Thanks for the good vibes! I was just out sweeping the driveway and he came trotting down the ally with his little buddy. They are now eating like bears. I guess I'm going to have to shell out for another spay/neuter.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
