Lost & Found

I have renewed love for my “famiry” after this weekend — my mom, cat son Othello, and two new babies, Minnie and TT. I received a panicked call from my mom on Saturday while I was hanging out with my friend in Sacramento. She was calling to say that all the cats were gone. She said that when she woke up, the front door was wide open, and that I had to come home immediately to find them. My mom is disabled and couldn’t go out searching herself.

I don’t know how this had happened. How could I have been so irresponsible? I had made sure the door was closed when I left. I always do. I know my mom has had problems with that door shutting, too. How can I be trusted with human children someday when I can’t even be trusted to properly fucking latch a door to make sure my cats don’t get out? By now it had been two hours since I had left. The cats were probably long gone, off to the hinterlands. And it would be another hour and a half before I’d be back in town to start the search.

We live directly next to train tracks, so you think the worst when your cats get loose. Not only that, but park management regularly traps feral cats and takes them to the pound, and if ours were lost, they could be one of the ones hauled away. The park itself is like a maze, full of walking paths and courts for cats to hide in. The prospect of searching for three cats in such conditions was daunting.

My mom called a bit later to tell me that she had found TT and Othello inside the house (TT hiding under the bed, Othello hiding on top of the kitchen cabinets), which is some kind of fucking miracle. That the front door was wide open for two hours and two out of the three cats had the good sense not to go outside. Now all we had to do was find Minnie. She was in heat, so it makes sense that she would be determined to get out. She wanted to find a man to satisfy her needs.

I canvassed the entire neighborhood shaking a treat bag and calling her name. Talked to a few neighbors to make sure people were keeping an eye out for her. I was starting to feel depressed as I finished up the opposite side of the neighborhood, no Minnie in sight. I returned to my house and sat down on the porch to have a cigarette, and continued crinkling the treat bag and calling her name. I heard a little meow coming from underneath the porch. Minnie!!! I turned around to peek underneath the stairs and there she was, silly little black chin emerging from the shadows.

There is a hole underneath our house where stray cats hang out, and Minnie had found her way in there. I quickly grabbed the bag of treats and placed some at the end of the stairs hoping to entice her. She slowly approached and as she went for the treats I grabbed her little cat body so fast. I had to trick her to get her to come to me, but I had no regrets. I brought her inside the house to join the rest of her famiry and at last, all three babies were safe and sound. She was gone about a total of 5 hours, and probably had been raped by the local tomcats while she was gone.

I kept my composure throughout the search, and I was proud of myself for that much, but as soon as she was found I broke down. My mom reached out to me for a hug and I cried and started shaking. “Don’t shake,” she told me. She’s okay now. She’s okay.

I thought the nightmare was over, but early Sunday morning, around 1 AM, my mom woke me to say that TT had escaped. Not another one! Not again! My mom was trying to take the garbage out, and when she came back inside the house, TT slid past her leg blocking the door and escaped. She wanted to go on an adventure just like her sister had.

At this time of the day I was in an antipsychotic haze, having taken my medication around 11 PM. I couldn’t even see straight, let alone think about canvassing the neighborhood at this hour looking for her. I did a cursory search in the area my mom said she disappeared, but she didn’t turn up, so I told my mom the best I could do was resume the search in the morning. I felt like a failure of a cat mother because I couldn’t go out immediately searching for her, but I needed sleep. I just told my mom to keep an eye out throughout the night and I’d wake up early to take over where she left off.

I woke up around 7 AM to begin canvassing. I was less hopeful I’d find TT than Minnie. TT is more my mom’s cat, and usually runs from me. She’s also not as food-motivated, so I was afraid the sound of a treat bag crinkling might not make her come. I made a full sweep of the neighborhood; no TT. By now she’d been gone about 12 hours. I Googled “how to find a lost cat” and contemplated my next step.

Given the fact that most cats stick to a five-house radius of where they were lost, I figured I should put the word out locally before turning to channels like social media to find her. I created a lost kitten flyer, which is when the reality of her possibly never returning hit me and I started to break down crying.

I had my mom approve the final version of the flyer and I printed off 140 copies to distribute to each of the homes in our neighborhood. I was a field manager for the Democratic National Committee in 2008, so I was no stranger to canvassing and had a definite plan of attack. I enlisted my boyfriend’s help and set out to drop off flyers.

I was determined. My boyfriend and I made good time, hitting about twice as many houses in the same time as I could have alone. By now it was about 4 PM and the next step was to go out looking for her after sundown, when cats are more likely to come out from hiding.

Still no sign of TT, but at least now I had all my neighbors looking for her too. I had to deal with a couple false sightings that got my hopes up — evidently there is another black and white cat in the neighborhood, but he’s not a kitten. I let my mom sleep and took a brief rest myself. I grabbed Othello and took him to cuddle, hoping his sister would come home tonight. I had walked seven miles that weekend between both lost kittens, so I was legitimately exhausted.

But I knew I couldn’t truly rest until she was found. Sleep was calling to me; my eyes shut and I almost let myself fall asleep. It was 8 PM, my usual bedtime. I forced myself up and went back out to the porch with the bag of treats, ready to canvass the neighborhood once more. I stopped to have a cigarette before starting, and heard a tiny mew. TT?! I turned around and saw the back of her little black body. At first I thought it was her sister Minnie who had escaped from inside the house. Then she looked at me and I saw the white mark on her nose and lip. TT!!!

As I approached, she ran back underneath the porch stairs, hiding in the exact same spot under the house that her sister was hiding the day before. I called for my mom, who was inside the house, and asked her to grab one of TT’s favorite toys thinking that would lure her out better than treats. While I was waiting, I laid out some treats near the end of the stairs, not expecting it to work, but to my surprise she approached for a bite, and I tried to grab her. (Her being hungry worked in my favor.) She ran back under the porch, but came back out and I grabbed her again, and this time I caught her. She tried like hell to get away, but I rushed inside the house and let her loose to join her famiry waiting inside.

After about a 20 hour adventure, TT was finally found, safe and sound. That girl ran me ragged. Both of the kittens were in various forms of heat, so yesterday I took them to get spayed. The whole experience made me so much more grateful for the family I have. What would I have done without them? My mind rushed with the horrifying possibilities of a life without my babies.

I’m currently having to get a letter saying that all three of them are “Emotional Support Animals.” Ah, the advantages of having a disability. We are only allowed one pet where we live, so I hope the letter from my therapist works now that they’ve discovered we have more than one.

I can’t imagine my life without them. They are more important than most of the people in my life. My mom even said she’d move before getting rid of any of the cats, so I have that upheaval to possibly look forward to. Hopefully the letter will suffice and all will be well. Landlords need to seriously relax with pet policies to begin with. Not everyone’s pet is damaging to property or a threat to neighbors. Irresponsible pet owners ruin it for everyone. 😡