The Cat Came Back

January 3, 2009, was a Saturday. Not three weeks earlier my husband and I had ended a glorious year of marriage and pregnancy by moving into our first house as husband and wife. With just three months to go until B-Day we were just getting settled into our new neighborhood when we lost a member of our little family.

Muriel was my cat. I'd known her about three times as long as I'd known my husband, having adopted her when I was nineteen and new to the world outside my parents' house. Ironically I'd adopted her from a friend and new neighbor who couldn't keep her any longer because she (my friend) was pregnant. Actually I adopted one of Muriel's own kittens and meant to find a new home for Muriel so she wouldn't have to go to the pound. But I never really looked for one, and soon Muriel had thwarted my plans by getting pregnant again. After Muriel had her second litter and the older kitten kept hunting and attacking the babies, I ended up getting rid of the would-be big sister. And when the babies got old enough I adopted them out, took Muriel to the spay clinic, and brought her home to stay.

After that she pretty much gave up on adventure and became a porch cat at best. As I spent the next ten years hopping from apartment to apartment, Muriel usually contented herself by taking the sunlight on various balconies and windowsills. One afternoon when I was twenty-one or so, I let her out for a minute without watching her as closely as I usually did and she ran off into the woods. When it came time for me to leave for work she was still gone, so I had to leave her outside. When I came home after dark I went to the edge of the woods and worriedly called her name. I heard crying in the distance, then leaves crunching, then Muriel tearing out of the woods toward my voice as if to say, "Oh my God, I've been worried sick!" After that, she never went further than my balcony without my close supervision, but I indulged her with little walks as frequently as I could.

Until January 3, 2009, when somehow inexplicably, she escaped. My husband and I fought that night. Then Muriel fought with my younger tom, Percy. My guess is she just got tired of all the fighting and longed to check out the new neighborhood. We're still not sure, but I think she must have slipped out the door unnoticed when my husband left the house to clear his head. I was hiding in the bedroom with a book, and when I came out to freshen the water bowls I realized we were one cat short. I must have searched the house top to bottom twenty times before I was forced to admit Muriel was gone. I headed outside with the flashlight and started searching the property. We had a wooden deck in front, but I couldn't see her underneath it. She didn't show up in the hedges. She wasn't under the car. I went up the street one way, calling her name, and then I went the other way. I went halfway around the block and back. Nothing. Finally I put my anger aside and called my husband distraught. When I had to say the words "I can't find Muriel", I broke into shoulder-rattling sobs.

And so began a seven-week ordeal no one in her third trimester should ever have to endure. My husband came home immediately and helped me search the block with no luck. We stayed up most of the night, watching from the living room window in case she should show up. She didn't. As soon as we got up that Sunday morning we went out to try our luck in the daylight. My husband spotted a cat he thought was Muriel, but she ran from him and lost him by jumping through a fence. We went to the house where he'd last seen her, and they let us search their backyard. But there was no Muriel to be found. That night was cold and rainy, and Monday morning Muriel was still gone and I was a wreck. I called in sick and spent my day posting Craigslist ads, filing reports with animal shelters, and walking the block over and over, six months pregnant and shaking a bag of Whisker Lick'n's in my hand. My husband brought home fliers, and with some help from friends we posted them all over the neighborhood and canvassed too.

A few reports came and went. People spotted cats in their yards that might have been Muriel, but by the time we got there the cats were gone or they were just the wrong cats. People pointed out other resources I might try. I visited the city animal shelter every other day after work and constantly kept track of their online mug book. But a week passed by and no Muriel. One week turned into two, two turned into three, and then we'd been without Muriel for a whole month. Gradually I stopped going to the animal shelter as much, stopped crying as much, tried not to imagine what my poor cat was going through, and finally stopped block-walking when it just got too cold.

Seven weeks after Muriel disappeared, I was cleaning up for an Oscar party when I came upon some old fliers, and I made the decision to throw them away. Not one hour later my husband pulled me out of the shower. A neighbor had come to the door with pictures on his cell phone of a cat he'd found starving in a storage closet off his garage. Just as we had no idea how Muriel had gotten out, he had no idea how this cat had gotten in. But he'd taken the cat to an emergency vet, paid the bill, and come home to ask around and maybe find the owner. Another neighbor had pointed him our way. Judging from the photos my husband was pretty sure it was Muriel. I couldn't believe it, but I quickly dressed and we got in the car and headed for the vet's office. I was sick with nerves. I almost didn't want it to be Muriel, because from what we'd heard the cat couldn't be in good shape.

When we got there we had to wait briefly. Then we were led through a room full of cages and vet techs to a pen where a tiny cat was hooked up to an IV. Her bony back was on me and I couldn't see her face, but she looked too small, and her coat actually looked shinier than my cat's. But I muttered, "Muriel?" When my cat turned around, saw my face, and cried that same cry of recognition I'd heard in the woods, I lost it like any pregnant woman missing her ten-year-old cat for seven weeks would. I cried from the gut, so hard I couldn't talk. My husband talked to the vets as I whimpered and stroked my cat's ears; Muriel most certainly wasn't out of the woods and had to stay overnight. She was starving and dehydrated, emaciated, with possible kidney failure. Every measurable fluid level in her body was off. If she made it through the night, we could pick her up in the morning and take her to her regular vet, where she'd probably need to stay for days.

We went home and called off the Oscar party, although a few cat-loving friends came by anyway to offer condolences. Our heroic neighbor came by to check on everything and even told us not to worry about paying him back, to worry about our baby and pay him back whenever we could. The next morning we'd heard no news from the vet (which was good news, as they said), and when we picked up Muriel at sunrise she'd made great progress. We took her to her vet's office, and there she stayed for a few more days before we brought her home with a weak, shaky walk, a bottle of antibiotics, and special food for her kidneys and weight gain. The cat insurance policy I'd taken out when Muriel turned ten paid off in a big way, as we were reimbursed for all the expenses after our deductible and were able to pay back our neighbor. As for Muriel, we celebrated her eleventh birthday just days after her return. It took a few months for her bald patches to fill in, for the meat to come back to her bones, and for her walk to steady itself out, but Muriel looks pretty much the same today as she did on January 3, 2009. Now she's almost twelve, and I don't anticipate any more adventures for her. I think she expended eight of those rumored nine lives.

As for my husband and me--well, it's a new year. Our rough times continued long after Muriel came home, as evidenced here in these very pages. But just as my cat was out there roaming the neighborhood and surviving the whole seven weeks I worried myself sick about her, love and commitment have been with us all along. Old fights and old problems have been put away, and now our marriage is left for new adventures.