TODAY'S BIG STORY: Mama Cat and Baby Kitten are together again! What a crazy story! On Monday afternoon, I decided to look again for the missing cats ~ the fourth day in a row. I parked my car on the side of the road and called for the cats. After ten minutes of Here Kitty Kitty's, I could hardly believe my ears! I heard a low, hoarse meow from a clump of tall grass. I kept calling, and Lucy reluctantly walked out into the open parking area. Lucy was alive and moving closer to me! When she was finally within reach, I picked her up. She protested the return trip in the car; but after four days on the side of the road, Lucy was heading home.
I filled her food bowl, and she filled her empty belly. After eating her food, Lucy always disappeared into the hedge, but today she reacted differently. She kept perching on the storm door and peeping through the glass...almost like she was missing something. She wouldn't come in; she just stood on her back feet and looked inside. Lucy cried at my bedroom window most of Monday night. I could hardly sleep. I remembered reading an article about cat guardians that stated how cats sometimes display grief through vocalizing. She just kept meowing in the most hauntingly melancholic tone...me-OWWW. She seemed to be crying out to me, "Go find my baby Linus!"
I wasn't even sure if Linus were still alive. He had been thrown from the car on Thursday night, and I did not know if Lucy had found him. I was confident that he must be starving after five days, so I determined to look for him one last time. On Tuesday morning, I drove back to the roadside spot where I found Lucy. I called for the kitten, but I heard nothing. I decided to meow, and I heard a faint response ~ almost a whisper. I meowed a second time and listened intently for the feeble mew of the kitten. As completely feral as that kitten had been, Linus slowly crept out of the tall weeds. Something in him ~some kind of survival mechanism~ was responding! Even with all of his apprehension and wildness, Linus was making a choice between life and death!
I kept meowing until the kitten was close enough to grab. With one quick snatch, I caught the wild kitten and tossed him into my car. He went completely bezerk! Linus was pouncing all around the car interior like an enraged five-pound hornet, and we both had five miles to go! When we finally made it to the garden shed, I hurriedly jumped out of the car and opened the back door! Linus sprang from the vehicle and ran to his mother! Within seconds, both cats disappeared from sight...back into the hedge behind the shed.
Home? I'm not quite sure if Lucy and Linus understand the concept of home ~ certainly not socialization. Safety? Togetherness? A place to eat? Whatever constitutes home to these two cats, they recognize a sense of place here. Even though they are still strangers to me, they are no longer in a strange environment. Since their return, nothing has changed ~ no grateful response, no playful interaction, not even a purr.
I have learned so much about myself during this entire process...how we are sometimes flung into certain situations beyond our control, how we humans do the best we can to make things right, how even the untamed respond to survival, and how we all need guardians and companions and a familiar sense of place. I haven't seen the cats for two days now; however, their cat food mysteriously disappears on a daily basis. They may not be my "pets", and I may not be their "person"; but we definitely have a story.
Dianne ; )
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