My Lost Cat Returned After 5 Weeks, Healthier Than Ever. Where Was He?

<p>Wendy MacNaughton</p>
<p>Wendy MacNaughton</p>

[The following is an excerpt from "Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology," with illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton.]

The animal shelter looked like a prison. It had long concrete hallways and heavy doors that rang out when shut. A perky volunteer showed me around. My crutches sounded like hammers thudding on the floor.

The volunteer took me to the cat rooms, which were lined with cages, and stepped back as I peered into each one.

"Tibby?" I whispered. The adult cats were crouched in the back and looked at me without moving. The kittens came forward, but they had drooping tails and mystified eyes. "I'm so sorry," I said to each one. "I wish I could take you home."

I returned to the pound every three days, and every three days it was the same. A volunteer would appear with sympathetic smiles and a bouncy voice.

"I lost my kitty," I would whimper. "He's large, shy, with wet, extraterrestrial eyes. He disappeared fifteen . . . twenty-one . . . thirty-three days ago."

"Oh, cats," the perky volunteers would respond knowingly. They would tell me hopeful stories. Everyone had hopeful stories. There were cats who had been gone for days, weeks, months before returning home. There were cats who had been found three thousand miles away, two years later. I listened with the fervor of the newly evangelized. Clearly the volunteers had some magic that I had lost or never had, an emotional sturdiness behind their bright smiles. How else could they stand all this kitty misery?

"You get used to it," one said.

"It's not so bad," said another.

They wore orange smocks and blue paper shoes on their feet. They cleaned cages and spoke into walkie- talkies and held sticks with feathers at the end so the cats could play. I began to love them for their small, patient smiles, their blue-papered feet, their soft hearts with tough outer crusts. So I listened raptly to their tales of kitty intrepidness. Then I went home and cried.

I e-mailed the psychic again. He's still fine, she responded. He'll return with the waning moon. Again I clung to her optimism, the wisdom of her third eye, her good haircut. But the waning moon came and went, and still no Tibby.

And slowly, I knew: A cat like Tibby couldn't survive in the urban jungle. He was too shy, too skittish, with no street smarts, and zero capacity to kick ass. I had to face it; if he hadn't come home, there could be only one reason. Something terrible had happened.

Then, five weeks after he'd disappeared, Tibby returned.

*** Tibby waltzed into the bedroom late one night. He greeted us with his Pavarotti meow. We sat bolt upright, awakened from sleep. He crawled under a chair.

"Tibby!" I said.
"Tibby!" Wendy said.
Fibby just stared, unsurprised. "Meow," said Tibby.

I spent the next few days cuddling Tibby and feeling, well, a little indignant. Where had he gone, I won- dered, and why had he left? And what was wrong with him now? He was approaching his food bowl with indifference, exhaling a kitty sigh, then walking away.

"He's not eating!" I wailed to Wendy. "He's sick! From being away from home! For so long!"

But when I took him to the vet, he was declared a half pound heavier. He had a silky coat, said the vet, and a youthful spring in his step.

"That's great," I responded, piqued.

When the relief that my cat was safe began to fade, and the joy of his prone, snoring form-sprawled like an athlete after a celebratory night of boozing- started to wear thin, I was left with darker emotions. Confusion. Jealousy. Betrayal. I thought I'd known my cat of thirteen years. But that cat had been anxious and shy. This cat was a swashbuckling adventurer back from the high seas. What siren call could have lured him away? Was he still going to this gilded place, with its overflowing food bowls and endless treats?

As I spoke (read: ranted), Wendy considered the perfect storm in front of her, of medication, of depression, and of cabin fever, all making landfall on the couch, and nodded with what she hoped registered as sympathy and shared indignation. But the thought bubble that hovered above her head was clear. What's the Big Deal? the neon letters shouted. He's a CAT.

He was home, she was thinking. Wasn't that good enough?

Well, actually, no.

Wendy abandoned sympathy and tried advice. Perhaps I should lock the cat door for a while so Tibby couldn't wander. I told her I had tried that once, years before. I'd shut him in for a night, and then had lain awake for hours, listening to a loud insistent thudding, which I couldn't identify at first but then realized was Tibby throwing himself against the door like a poltergeist. I wasn't going to untrain an old cat, I said. Not now. Besides, I told her, that wasn't the point.

Then for goodness sake tell me, what is the point? screeched the thought bubble, loud enough for my subconscious to hear.

"I can't explain it," I said, my tone haughty, "to someone who hasn't really owned cats."

Where do our pets go and what do they do, when we're not around? And why? Aren't we enough for our furry companions? For animal lovers, these are the ultimate questions. And so began a quest familiar to anyone who has realized that the man in their life is not who he seems: the quest to find out where Tibby had been for those five weeks.

So began Operation Chasing Tibby.