Phone Home

I had another post already written for today, but a friend called me last night almost in tears that her cat Frisky had been missing for several days.

Many years ago my sister gave me two kittens for Christmas, a brother and sister. I let my young niece help name them; she saw an M and a W on their foreheads so we settled on Molly and Walter. I had every intention of letting her have all the honors, but as I recall her first choice for M was Matilda and I decided I needed to step in to help with the naming process since no cat of mine was going to be named after a witch. Apologies to all the humans out there named Matilda - it's a perfectly nice name, but cats and witches have a long history that I needed to break.

Fast forward a few years and Molly somehow escaped the house. At that time I was living in a townhome that looked out onto a heavily forested land with a bayou running down the middle. For northerners out there, a bayou is essentially a slow-moving creek found mostly in the Gulf region. While it is a fantastic area to live in it's not conducive to indoor cats since the wildlife is not exactly cat-friendly.

I was devastated and tried all the usual tricks to find her; I called her name (because every cat owner knows how well cats respond to you calling their names), searched under the surrounding townhome decks, and even went as far as to set up a trap. I don't recall the exact details of the trap which involved a pet cage, cat food and a trip wire, but amazingly it worked on day four of five.

I was elated... Molly managed to scratch me as I took her into the house but that didn’t matter. Walter also wasn't very pleased to see her, probably due her smelling like the place he had always yearned to go to but never managed to get to. A few days went by and she was still hesitant of me and Walter still shunned her, but one can understand that; she had been through quite an ordeal. On day ten or so I got home from work and was flabbergasted to see Molly staring at me from the outside on the deck! I had no idea how she had managed to get outside again, but I rushed out and she was much more compliant about coming inside this time. But I had a problem.

I had three cats in the house. I was so blinded by wanting my Molly back that I had ignored the obvious. The cat I had trapped was not only bigger and had a bad replica of an M on her forehead, but had scratched me that day I had brought her in with her front claws. You see, I had declawed the front claws of both my cats since they could retract them fully.

That experience taught me many things - one being check for front claws. But it also taught me love can cause so much tunnel vision to the point of blindness that you overlook what’s right in front of you; and if you want something too badly you’ll ignore the warning signs that everyone else sees.  Love isn't something to be shunned, just don't forget to keep looking left and right when crossing the street.

Oh, and Frisky if your out there reading this it’s time to phone home.  Your mother misses you.