Catty Business

Everybody knows by now that I am an animal-lover, as long as they are cuddly and fluffy. I'll take in abandoned cats, when owners "forget" to take them when they move. And so, although I already had 5 cats, when one heavily pregnant one showed up at my door, I couldn't turn it away. It was summer and her ladyship preferred to stay in the woodshed, where indeed one day a lot of kittens were happily attached to mom. And after a while equally happily jumped around in my garden!

I didn't mind; the garden was large and I was finding homes for the kittens. But one of my cats simply hated the nursery that was going on outside. And so, on Christmas day she packed her bags, unknown to me of course. I started looking for her around dinner-time, and ended around midnight. For weeks I must have talked to thousands of people, to no avail. I did make a lot of friends though and discovered that there are more animal-lovers around than I had previously thought. But nobody had seen my cat.

I made mailers, and every shop in town had one cello-taped in the window; I placed an ad in the newspaper, I did what I could, but after weeks still no sign of the darned cat! I decided that I needed to go on a "stake-out". After all, the Police do things like that, don't they? And so I ended up sitting in my car, with a torch, a book, coffee and a banana, close to an empty waste land. I also had a so-called trap cage to catch the cat in(not one where you kill it, but more like a cage with a lid at the front and a mechanism that closes the door behind the cat) and plenty of fresh fish. I'm not stupid, I know cats and they can smell a fish from kilometers away.

So I placed the trap, the lid open, and the fish in the back in the high grass. It was getting dark. And very very quiet. Well, there were plenty of cats around, all sniffing. And rats and mice. I was dozing off, until I heard a sound. It was getting busy with night-people, apparently. I watched in amazement how several people I knew went quietly about at 2 a.m. Where were they going? I fell asleep again, until there was a loud knock on the window. A light was shining at me, and then a voice said:"And what are you doing here in the middle of the night?" It was a Police man, concerned about my safety. I told him that I was on a "stake-out for my cat". It took me a while to assure him that I am normal and this is my normal behavior. He must have thought differently, but left me to it.

I dozed off again, only to be woken up again by the closing of the trap-door. I had already released about 6 cats, a rat and creatures I didn't even know existed. This time I had caught an angry possum! Unfortunately while releasing this one, the door of the car slammed closed and locked. I looked at my watch 4 a.m and miles from home.

After a brisk walk home (by now it was about 5 a.m) I finally arrived home, minus the car and cage, and of course my house-keys! After waking up my long-suffering husband we went back and picked up the car and cage. But no cat.

The local Police has never offered me a job for special stake-outs and I have never seen my cat again. Perhaps there are other people like me, who end up with pre-owned cats? I like to think so, and if you ever end up with a cat on your doorstep, think of me..............it could be my cat.