Miss Stray

We found a cat living in our garden, a very small petite thing she was. So we thought she was a kitten, the vet who checked her over for an identity chip, told us she was at least 18 months old and unfortunately didn’t find a chip. On the vets advice, we put a very fetching luminous collar on her, with a contact phone number on and placed her near where we lived, hoping she’d make her way back home. We kept an eye on her and at 11pm at night, when she was still out there yowling, we brought her in to spend the night in the utility room and provided dinner, as the weather recently has been more like winter here than summer.

Next morning she was keen to be off, so I thought that’s it she’s off home, but over the next few days, she would emerge from various bits of greenery in my garden, when ever we returned home. I contacted vets to see if she’d been reported missing, made up posters, which we placed around the area and also registered her on missing pets websites.

Somebody rang up soon after the posters were displayed, hopeful that she was their cat. We hadn’t revealed a very identifiable piece of information about her on the posters and unfortunately she was definitely not their cat.

A week past and still nobody claimed her. She wasn’t keen on leaving the house during the day and we were all beginning to get quite fond of her, except Sherlock, who spent much of his time glaring at her from vantage points throughout the house. The internet brought up a few enquiries, one from someone looking for a male, who went missing at the other end of the country. I felt so sorry for them and hated having to tell them Miss Stray wasn’t their beloved pet.

After 2 weeks we decided if no one came forward to claim her, we would just keep her. The offspring had named her and we started to gradually integrate her, with the other creatures living in our home.

Then the phone call came that initially I’d been wishing for, but now dreaded . Miss Stray’s owner had finally seen a poster and called . She mentioned the information we’d held back, this was her owner. She lived on the other side of a major road from us and had recently rehomed Miss Stray, from a neglectful background. The day she went missing had been her first day venturing out of their house, where she must have got lost and disorientated. It was lovely to reunite her with her family, especially as there was children who had really missed her. I was sad to say goodbye and she left me hankering after another feline, to fill that space. So we decided we were going to become a 2 cat household and that a female, young, ginger cat, was just what we needed. Getting in touch with a few local cat rescue places, I realised they were full to bursting, with cats needing homes. So that’s how we ended up with farty kitten. A male, 7 month old white and tabby bag of furry bones.