A Blog Featuring Art and My Spoiled Rotten Cat: THE QUEEN GETS LOST!!!!!!

Yes, you read the title correctly. My poor Queenie escaped the other day and was missing for two whole days! So yeah I wasn't thrilled.

On top of that I had been having a really bad week. And then, one Sunday morning, I woke and got ready to go to the meeting, only realizing later that I hadn't seen her. Now, normally in the morning, I immediately go to find my baby and squeeze her. That morning I was running late because I had barely slept. So I left and when I got home I looked for her.

But no baby.

She was not in her usual spots. She was not in her unusual spots. She was not hiding in some seemingly impossible place. We TORE the house apart. And when we finally had searched the house through and through for the hundreth time, we gave in to the growing fear that she had somehow escaped the house completely.

Thus the problem grew from a contained house-size problem, to a huge open unknown problem. And as my cat is a BIG BIG BIG part of my life, you can imagine my reaction. I had had Sapphire longer than any other pet in my whole life. She had been through at least FIVE moves with me. We had made it through thick and thin and she was there for me no matter my mood. She was there to cuddle with and take funny pictures of and laugh at when she did something stupid like fall off the bed. I could not imagine my life without her.

And at that moment, all I was doing was imagining the worst. I don't know how long a stared at the busy road that spread right outside my window, where cars went 55 to 60 mph. I don't know how long I stared at the thick woods behind the house where she would be lost forever. And when one night had past, morning came after many tears and with a SIGHTING.

My aunt lives in a trailer park across and down the road and she knows a lot of people in there. And that morning she called me and related a sighting that made me want to cry some more. I think I did, actually. She said that one of her friends owns the only other calico cat in the trailer park and some of her neighbors had caught a kitty that they thought was hers. They brought the kitty to her, but upon being told that it wasn't hers, they let the poor thing go. They hadn't known yet that my baby was missing and that the very cat they had once had in their hands was MY baby.

But we then knew where my baby had gone. I set off to the trailer park to search for her at once. Unfortunately, as it was a hot day, my aunt informed me that all the cats in the trailer park normally hide under the trailers to escape the heat during the day. And so, the search was deemed impossible. Because something you must understand about this trailer park is that it's HUGE. And most of the trailers have openings underneath them, not to mention the porches that adorned EVERY SINGLE ONE.

So we decided, much to my crazed mind's dismay, that we would wait until the sky began to darken to pick the search back up again. According to the people my aunt know, they all said that the cats would always come out when the sun went down. And so when it got dark, we set out again. With time running out the darker it got.

Shaking a bag of treats, spreading pictures, and talking to all we could, the night came and I turned on my flashlight. We couldn't stay out much longer. Two people sent us in the same direction as to the last time they saw a cat fitting my baby's description and we were about to head that way when a friend of mine called us on our cells. He was in the opposite direction and was claiming he saw a kitty like Sapphy.

We had to decide whether to follow the direction of two or one who wasn't sure. We went to my friend first. And it was a good thing we did.

A man who lived in a house right before the trailer park was outside with my friend and said he saw a cat that wasn't one of his own. He said it had been under one of his pine trees but it had run off. We began to search over his yard and then came the cry: "There it is!"

I ran over and shined my flashlight over a cat that crouched under a pine tree. Her eyes reflected the light back at me and I drew a shocked breath: "It's her! It's Sapphy!"

And there she was. I told the others to stay back and I approached slowly with the treats. At first, she ran a little ways away, but then she registered the treats in my hand and drew close enough for me to scoop up. And then we were reunited!

I brought her home and shut her in my room, safe and sound. She ate like a fiend. And she purred. And I prayed in thanks that we found her. And now here she is, in my room, sleeping on my makeup stand.

And for all the ways I imagined that she could have escaped, I followed her the other morning and found a window with a broken screen where she jumped out of and tried to escape again. So now we keep that window shut. And because she is still VERY curious about the outside (she meows and sits at the door) I am going to purchase for my little dork a harness so we can go outside together, without the threat that I might lose her.

For now though, she will just have to deal with the fact that she is grounded until Armageddon.