20 hours of a lost cat
Ziggy recently went missing for 20 agonising hours.
Background:
When we got her from the shelter in January 2016, Ziggy had always been an indoor cat. After much research, we decided it was safest to continue since we're not far from a main road.
A few months later, she expressed curiosity about the outside world, so we took her into our backyard. First on a little harness, then eventually without it. Ever since she's liked an outside jaunt most days. We'd hang out with her as she lounged around the garden, watched the birds, sniffed a flower or two, and then sauntered back inside after twenty minutes. Occasionally a neighbourhood cat would wander into the yard, and she'd whoosh over to scare it off her turf. But she'd always stop at the border, then get right back to the critical business of lazing around.
Like this.
These excursions continued without incident for over two years... until two Thursday afternoons ago!
Here's how it all went down...
3.30PM - Ziggy is flopped out on the grass as per, when a little black cat appears at the edge of our garden. Ziggy springs to action and rushes at it. But instead of stopping like usual, she leaps over the fence into the neighbour's yard and then disappears in hot pursuit.
Shit. I race outside and head down the street to look for her... but she's nowhere to be found.
4PM - I return home and try to remain calm. I post a message to the village Facebook group. It felt like the best first port of call, as it has swiftly located many missing cats in the past. (And also provided critical updates on the availability of fresh bread rolls in the village shop during the #BeastFromTheEast!)
4.30PM - Gareth arrives home from his shift to find me anxiously pacing the streets.
5PM - Someone on the Facebook group says they'd spotted Ziggy and the black cat a while earlier, "having an altercation," but then they'd run off in opposite directions.
Ziggy is a street fighter now!?
The Worst Evening Of Our Lives - That may sound overly dramatic, but dudes... we were stricken. Between shifts of village patrol, we sat silently on the couch, trying to decide how worried to be.
On the one hand, it had only been a few hours, and my cat-owning friends reassured me that cats pull this shit all the time and then waltz back in. On the other hand, Ziggy had never been outside our yard before, so how the heck would she know how to get home!? It was hard not to imagine a tabby pancake in the middle of the highway.
It is ridiculous how deeply, deeply attached you become to a creature that is, for the most part, completely indifferent to your undying affection. 78% of our daily conversations revolve around her exploits. The house seemed cavernous without her stripey bod sashaying in and out of the room, or scratching her claws on the bottom step like she knows she's not meant to, or making a deposit to the litter tray juuuust as we sit down to enjoy a cup of tea.
“I don't know what I'll do without that jerk,” Gareth finally says, “She's my wee pal.”
He is so sad and sincere. I just want to vom from the guilt, since she'd nicked off on my watch.
“What did we ever talk about before her?”
“I can't remember.”
“I guess we'll have to get divorced if she doesn't come home.”
We laugh halfheartedly.
It rains all night. Neither of us sleeps. I get up every hour or so to see if she's outside or to shuffle up and down our street.
(I should mention at this point that I'd injured my lower back a few weeks earlier, with any walks over ten minutes sending excruciating pain radiating across my lower back and down my legs. Your timing sucks, cat! ;) )
Friday 5AM - G has to leave for work. I begin yet another shuffling lap of the village, calling her name as I shake a little bag of dry food and noticing the inner conflict between missing moggie angst versus feeling like a twit for making such a racket. I mean, people will be trying to sleep.
I see two tabbies that are not Ziggy, plus the black cat from the altercation. All are wearing smug I ain't seen nufin faces.
6AM - My back is cooked. I take a nap on the couch.
7.30AM - Wake up and submit cat to every Lost Pets forum in the land. After advice from dear friends who've previously had AWOL moggies as well as the reading Cats Protection What to do if your cat goes missing list, decide it is time to make some flyers.
7.35 AM - Scour the Google for a Lost Cat Microsoft Word template.
7.36 AM - Download template.
7.37 AM - Move template to Trash due to its use of SHITTY WORD ART. One has standards.
7.38 AM - Start making own flyer.
All hail MS Word.
8.15 AM - Text Gareth and ask him to please sneakily print as many copies as possible.
8.35 AM - Gareth confirms he has managed to print 20 copies but says, don't we have a printer at home?
8.40 AM - Dig out old printer that we had shoved into a corner a year ago after it stopped working for no good reason. Commence Operation Fix That Printer.
9.36AM
9.42AM - BREAKTHROUGH.
10.00 AM - Painkillers have kicked in. Commence slow hobble around the streets avec flyers.
11.30 AM - Return home from spamming the immediate neighbourhood.
11.55 AM - Phone call from a kind gentleman who lives down the street.
He got my flyer!
He's found Ziggy in his garage!
12:00 PM - Toddle down the street. Kind Gent opens his garage door. A pair of eyes peer out from the darkness. It is the Striped One!
PRINT IS NOT DEAD AND NEITHER IS ZIGGY.
12:10 PM - After much coaxing out with Dreamies, then a dozen thank yous of wild gratitude to the Kind Gent, I carry a mewling Ziggy back down the street.
12:25 PM - Having scoffed down a tin of Gourmet Gold, Ziggy leaves a fragrant present in her litter tray, lolls casually on the living room floor, then dozes off like nothing bloody happened.
Gareth: Expecting The Worst Since 1973.
