A few nights ago, a cute little cat seemed to ‘adopt’ our family. It was cold outside, and my son had just gone to check on something with his car. He came back in laughing as he had had to fight to get through the door without a cat coming in.
Since we don’t own a cat, this was rather unexpected. Apparently the cat was very friendly, and seemed determined to come through the door with him.
Little did we know the journey we were about to begin.
We kept checking throughout the evening, and the cat seemed to mount a very determined assault on our porch. He was sitting there quite calmly, just staring up at the door. If we opened it a crack to see if he was out there, he would move hopefully towards the door.
If we didn’t have our wonderful four-year-old silver Labrador named Cocoa, we would have probably let the cat in just because it was below freezing, and he seemed to be trying to get out of the cold.
But there’s no way that our dog would’ve allowed that, and I didn’t feel like spending the rest of the evening cleaning up whatever mess the dog and the cat would make as they fought their way through the house.
As someone who’s had animals as pets for most of my life, I struggle seeing any animal suffer. I won’t go to an animal shelter, because I could honestly leave with every single animal there. The knowledge that a cat was outside in the cold made me uncomfortable, so I took him a plate of tuna for food, and a box with some towels both inside and over the top so that he would have somewhere warm to sleep.
I felt like I was at least doing something.
Over the next couple of days, this friendly cat would keep showing up. I realize that it was probably because I’ve given him some decent food, and we continued feeding him some chicken which he ate in a fairly calm manner. It didn’t seem like he was starving, and his overall condition led us to believe that he had a home somewhere where he was well taken care of.
But he kept coming back, and with the weather getting colder, both Holly and I were becoming anxious for his welfare.
We decided that we would give it a couple more days, and then take him to the animal shelter to see if he had been chipped. I was perfectly willing to continue with this plan of action, but Holly was struggling more and more each day with the idea that this sweet and affectionate cat was not being taken care of, and could be out there all alone.
So she took to the Internet, and started hunting.
It seems that our area has a lost and found pets page, and Holly, who is probably the greatest Internet researcher that I’ve ever met, decided to see if somebody had reported a cat like this missing. As well as unique markings on his face, he actually has some other unique features which make him fairly distinct and easily recognizable.
And after some hunting, it seemed that she had found a match.
Because back in July someone had posted a picture looking just like this little guy, and said that he had gone missing after July 4. There was nothing else mentioned, and so we just assumed that the cat had been found and then gone missing again, and he was just wandering type who liked to hit on kind people and get them to share food with him.
It’s not unknown in the cat world, and we are certainly the kind of people who are an easy target for an enterprising cat.
Holly reached out to see if the cat was still missing, and you can imagine our surprise when we got an excited reply from the cat’s owner. It seems that they hadn’t been able to get him into the house on July 4th and probably being scared by fireworks the cat, whose name turns out to be Mittens, had gone missing. He usually slept every night with their oldest child, but they hadn’t seen anything of him in five months.
To say they were surprised and elated is probably a huge understatement.
So Tuesday lunchtime we came home and found Mittens hanging outside of our house. We enticed him into our garage with even more food, and spend the afternoon with him. We placed a hot pad on the ground, turned it onto warm, put a couple of towels over it and just let him lay there while we fed him, petted him and gave him as much attention as we could give to make up for the last five months where he’s been running alone.
And waited until his family got there.
When is owner got out of the car, he was accompanied by a boy of around 8-9 years old. This was the young man who Mittens would sleep with every night, and to say that he was overjoyed to see his cat would also be an understatement. It was certainly a bittersweet moment, because in the few days that we had been adopted by this cat, we had come to care for him a lot.
But seeing the light that young boy’s face meant more to us than anything else.
I’m not sure what Mittens felt about being returned home, because he’d found a couple of suckers who were feeding him and providing him a hot pad to lay on while they stroked him and paid him every attention. I think after 5 months roaming without a home, he probably felt like he’d checked into a 5 star hotel, and he seemed determined to enjoy his stay as much as possible.
Later this evening we had some messages from his owner to let us know that Mittens was making himself at home, getting re-acquainted with his family, and was doing very well. His owner thanked us over and over, and it was great to know that this little cat, who had somehow talked his way into our hearts, was again living his best life, at home with his family.
After all the time he was on his own, he deserves all the love and attention they can give him.
But honestly, I kind of miss him already.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings