Pets

Several years ago, our big male tabby, Winston, disappeared on Thanksgiving Day. He’s an indoor cat, as are all our others, and it was just me, my husband, and our 2 sons at home, so not a lot of opening and closing of any of the doors to the house that would have provided escape opportunities.

Back in the late 1980s, one of our cats did manage to get out of the house, unbeknownst to us, and was struck and killed by a car. A neighbor let us know. We never did figure out how she got out. Ever since then, it takes me about a nanosecond to panic if I can’t find one of our cats, and I’m momentarily sure someone has gotten out somehow.

I searched the proverbial everywhere for Winston, and twice walked the neighborhood calling for him, once after dark. Good luck looking for a black and brown tabby cat in the dark, right?

As I came back in the house after my second walk around, our younger son was coming down the stairs with Winston in his arms. He’d been hiding under that son’s bed, where I had looked, more than once. It’s a platform bed, with pullout drawers, and the damn cat had gone between one of the drawers and the headboard, into a space I couldn’t see when I lifted up the mattress from the foot end of the bed. Had I removed it from the bed entirely, I’d have seen him.

I was so relieved I burst into tears. I’d had such a knot in my stomach all the 9 hours he was “missing” I lost my appetite for the Thanksgiving feast and didn’t even want to eat.