A Moment’s Inattention = 2 Months of Suffering

The human had a very challenging end of May. First her car died and required an expensive repair. Then her mother passed away suddenly. Next, Shahja got sick — a UTI and possibly a stone in the urinary tract — which necessitated a trip to the emergency veterinary service. The 2-legged then had to take Shahja to her regular vet for boarding, as she was leaving at 4 am the next day to drive back for her mother’s funeral. She made that grueling 12-hour drive twice in 36 hours. When she picked Shahja up at the vets the day after her return, the poor little guy was groggy from meds and unhappy from having been poked, prodded, scanned, caged, and medicated by strangers for the past 5 days, so she opened his soft-sided carrier’s zipper just wide enough to stick her hand in to pet him on the drive home. Between stress and sleep deprivation, when she got him home, she got out of the vehicle without remembering to fully secure the carrier’s zipper. She got 10 feet from the front door when the little guy saw the opening and barreled out of the carrier. He’s been missing ever since — 58 long and stressful days.

For the first month or so, he mostly stayed nearby and the human occasionally saw him in the yard or on the deck, not that she could get him to come inside. However, for the past few weeks, she hasn’t seen him at all. Fortunately, he and his sister were microchipped when they were spayed/neutered in January, so the monitoring service was able to alert the human last evening that someone had seen him — or a cat that looked like him. A conversation with that person led to second alert this morning that another family had found a tiger kitty and put him in a carrier. The two-legged dashed off to see if it was Shahaja and it was. We are happy to report that he’s now home and recuperating from his summer of adventure. He’s definitely lost weight but otherwise doesn’t look too bad given all the dangers he potentially faced, including heat, pounding rain and wind, fireworks, dogs, coyotes, other cats, cars, and mean humans. It’s a miracle he’s home alive and well. He’s quite the cuddle muffin and has been singing and mixing up a storm.

It will take some time for him to adjust to being indoors again and around other cats. And the other cats seem to not recognize this new cat that is in the house, so Shahja is in one of the bedrooms where he can rest, eat, be hugged and petted, and hopefully get used to being back inside. For all those who prayed for his safe return, thank you! For those who might be considering the option of microchipping, it’s likely the only reason we were able to get him back home.

(c) Copyright 2023, PeggyMalnati. All rights reserved. Images my own.

Can’t I Just Sleep a Little Longer?

It was the morning after US Independence Day. In this neighborhood, the fireworks displays are truly impressive and on par with the work of professionals. They’re set off nightly from mid-June’s Flag Day through a week after the 4th of July.  And last night, they started in at 7 am and really got going around 8 pm, making a terrible ruckus well-past midnight. In fact, the concussions were so loud and so close that a wreath the human has had hanging on the bedroom wall for years actually fell down. The only thing Caesar is more afraid of than fireworks is thunderstorms and he endured both yesterday.  The poor kitty lay glued to the human’s side for hours, then went off and hid with the Little Red Bee. Needless to say, the Emperor was tired this morning and not in the mood to vacate the bed quite as soon as the human, who had to work.

 

 

(c) Copyright 2019, PeggyMalnati. All rights reserved. Photos my own.