Tuesday, July 29, 2008

I Wanna Be A Cowboy Baby...


My sister wrote a little story about her cat. I hope you enjoy stories with nice surprises involving cats with seven toes and a cute name--

From her e-mail...

Cute and friendly, my multi-toed blue eyed cat named Cowboy has a story to tell. If only I could understand…



Last Monday was the last day that I had seen Cowboy. He was hanging out in the front yard under a tree waiting for the stream of neighbors that take their evening walk. He was famous for greeting each of them, with dogs or without, and sometimes following them for a few houses before running home for the next round. Most of the neighbors told tales of seeing him in their yards (or sometimes even their houses) at one time or another.



This being time for the county fair, many people use our street for free parking while they attend. The fair started Tuesday and Cowboy was seen no more… I posted signs, visited shelters, checked the roads for bodies, sent out bulletins on Craig’s list, everything I could think of. My house felt empty (well, except for 3 dogs and the other kitty Velcro). We all missed him and his antics. Yesterday was day 5 and I resigned myself to the fact that we may not ever know what happened to or see crazy Cowboy again. Needless to say I was very sad.



This afternoon my phone rang. A sweet older lady asked if I was missing a cat. “ I have him right here. I called the number on the tag on his collar”. I asked her where she was, expecting it to be just a block away. “Trenton-Healdsburg road”, she said, half way between River road and Healdsburg”. For those who don’t know that is at least 20 miles away from our house, out in the hills! He had just wandered into her garden and was watching her work. When she approached him instead of running he rolled over and showed her his belly.



Well needless to say, I jumped in my car and drove out to get him. He had lost a few pounds and had picked up a couple of ticks but looked none the worse for the adventure. I guess I will never know if a selfish fair goer decided he was too cute and took him, or whether a chickenshit neighbor decided to relocate him instead of calling me with any problem that he might have with my cat. But I do know that they weren’t clever enough to remove his collar, thank God, and Cowboy has found his way home. He and Velcro will be locked away for the next week and a half while the fair is in town, but otherwise, I can only hope that he learned to stay away from the creep that would do such a thing. He loves his outdoor greeting ritual too much to keep him inside forever.


(METHINKS CEILING CAT WAS LOOKING AFTER COWBOY)

3 comments:

Dogbait said...

I love happy cat stories. To think I was once a cat hater but they knew that and worked on me!

Jeannie said...

Good story - happy your sister got her Cowboy back. I'll bet a fairgoer took him then let him outside one day...

Anonymous said...

Cats are great for getting themselves into trouble. I had a cat, Hazel, who loved to hop into a car if the owner was visiting one of our neighbors and had left a window or a door open. I always feared that someday someone would drive off with her. The only thing that would have prevented anyone from getting too far with her was her absolute hatred of being in a moving vehicle. When I had to take her to the vet I had to use our pickup truck with a good shell on it. I'd put her crate in the back and secure it, then I'd close the window to the cab and turn the radio up loud. That way she could scream at the top of her lungs and I could only faintly hear her.

I'm glad Cowboy was found and your sister got him back.