We thought he was a goner: Part The Last 3
Well, the cat did indeed come back, as you've probably gathered. But not before I'd lost a couple of good years and gained several gray hairs worrying about him, and several blogging evenings' worth of surfing time Googling "lost cat" and variants thereon.
And freaking the hell out as one site after another warned me that my pet could be anywhere--anywhere!-- so the best thing to do was to get him tagged and microchipped [see previous guilt-encrusted entry]. Failing that, I should post big, florescent signs at intersections for at least a mile in all directions, call local vets every day, and make sure to visit the pet shelter--in person!--at least every couple of days, lest they euthanize my unidentified kitty.
I didn't do all that; I couldn't. I had a job heading into its busy season, and a kid who's always in her busy season, and a household without a dishwasher. So I did some of it, and kept worrying. By then it was Halloween, and I figured if Shy Kitty hadn't been eaten by raccoons there was no point in looking for him amid the tromping kids and the revellers and the fireworks (Vancouverites take every opportunity to set off fireworks) and our trick-or-treaters were sparse, so while RW and MG went around the neighborhood with some new friends, I stayed home and surfed some more while I waited for the doorbell to ring.
And lo, I found a site that purported to do lost-pet consultations for a flat fee. And so desperate was I that I plugged my cat's information into the form provided, and waited for the inevitable deluge of spam.
Instead, within an hour or two I got a personal response from the pet-finder, suggesting that, based on the information I'd given, my cat was probably very close, no further than three or four houses away, and had gone into a sort of semi-torpid "displaced state" wherein he huddled and hid from everything and wouldn't respond to calls or offers of food, even from his trusted family. Most cats in this state, she said, will come out looking for food three to eleven days after leaving the house. She suggested scouring the immediate neighborhood, knocking on doors with lost-cat fliers, and renting or buying a humane trap.
[A humane trap!? Yeah, that's what we thought, too. We didn't do it. Finishing up tomorrow. These mini-posts brought to you by exhaustion & overcommitment, and by the letter zzzzz...]
And freaking the hell out as one site after another warned me that my pet could be anywhere--anywhere!-- so the best thing to do was to get him tagged and microchipped [see previous guilt-encrusted entry]. Failing that, I should post big, florescent signs at intersections for at least a mile in all directions, call local vets every day, and make sure to visit the pet shelter--in person!--at least every couple of days, lest they euthanize my unidentified kitty.
I didn't do all that; I couldn't. I had a job heading into its busy season, and a kid who's always in her busy season, and a household without a dishwasher. So I did some of it, and kept worrying. By then it was Halloween, and I figured if Shy Kitty hadn't been eaten by raccoons there was no point in looking for him amid the tromping kids and the revellers and the fireworks (Vancouverites take every opportunity to set off fireworks) and our trick-or-treaters were sparse, so while RW and MG went around the neighborhood with some new friends, I stayed home and surfed some more while I waited for the doorbell to ring.
And lo, I found a site that purported to do lost-pet consultations for a flat fee. And so desperate was I that I plugged my cat's information into the form provided, and waited for the inevitable deluge of spam.
Instead, within an hour or two I got a personal response from the pet-finder, suggesting that, based on the information I'd given, my cat was probably very close, no further than three or four houses away, and had gone into a sort of semi-torpid "displaced state" wherein he huddled and hid from everything and wouldn't respond to calls or offers of food, even from his trusted family. Most cats in this state, she said, will come out looking for food three to eleven days after leaving the house. She suggested scouring the immediate neighborhood, knocking on doors with lost-cat fliers, and renting or buying a humane trap.
[A humane trap!? Yeah, that's what we thought, too. We didn't do it. Finishing up tomorrow. These mini-posts brought to you by exhaustion & overcommitment, and by the letter zzzzz...]
posted by elswhere | 9:58 PM
2 Comments:
Thanks for sharing - yours is the most interesting blog I've read in quite a while :) Your writing is clean and concise, and I'm assuming you speak without too many pauses or saying the words UM or LIKE every every 5 seconds :)
I'm glad that this story ends well, but sheesh! lots of suspense! How did you find him? At least I know it wasn't a humane trap.
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