Fun fact: Cat food left outdoors may encourage hungry coyotes to eat it (and your cat), too.
Our decade-old gray Tabby, Augie, whose ancestry must have included Attila the Hun and Genghis Kahn, had escaped. It was a crisp Christmas morning and my husband wanted a fire. Augie was snoozing in his secluded corner, fifteen feet from the door, so my husband slipped out for firewood. Coming in, his arms full of wood, he became aware of a quick furry exit.
Augie had recently been in a skirmish that reduced half his face to hamburger. The vet had sent him home with antibiotics and the dreaded head cone, to be worn at least until mid-January. He was not supposed to go outside wearing that thing.
When Augie didn’t show up that night for dinner (despite our calling “Here, kitty kitty, turkey trimmings”), we decided the prodigal would surely return the next day. After all, if The Cone impaired his ability to slurp down his usual canned food, how would he manage with four-legged food that could run away?
Three days later, I was trudging through the snow, leaving “lost cat” notes at every home on the block. A “lost pet” ad with photo went in the paper. But by the end of the week, concluding he was gone for good, I washed his sleeping pad and dishes.
Our life with Augie had begun one blistering August afternoon. While I sweated in the kitchen preparing dinner, my husband and son left in search of shade. They ended up at a local riverside park legendary for unauthorized animal disposal. Unwanted bunnies and kittens and native groundhogs roamed its thick landscaping shrubs. Coyotes in the adjacent hill considered the park their private restaurant.
Enter tender-hearted husband and son, who heard a weak meow from a drainage culvert. The tiny one, who couldn’t resist a chicken nugget plucked from the trash, found himself wrapped in an old towel and headed for a new future.
“He will be an outdoor cat,” my husband assured me, rummaging in the cupboard for some tuna. My asthma had limited pets to those swimming in a fish bowl. Augie, so named for being found in August, would break the household furry-pet ban.
The “outdoor cat only” promise was forgotten as winter came. I vacuumed twice as much and went to the doctor for stronger asthma medicine. When Aug became the Handsome Hunk for local fertile female felines, I shuffled him off to the vet for The Operation. Of course, the bill got padded: “Animal Control laws require a rabies shot.” And that led to a notice from Animal Control that he needed a pet license to dangle off his flea collar.
Life with Augie soon settled into a rhythm of cat food and catting around. Not wanting to install a pet door (the neighborhood had raccoons), we resigned ourselves to increased use of the back door for his “duty” and “recreation,” the latter requiring at least annual trips to the vet for his relapses into warfare.
Despite doting human care, some cats have no moral conscience for taking care of their keepers in old age. And thus, our prodigal felt compelled to escape that Christmas morning, liberating him to revel in the riotous living curtailed by his convalescence.
Three weeks later, I was fixing dinner one frigid January night when my husband came in after teaching school, holding a familiar gray-striped animal. “He was sitting in the garage when I raised the door,” he said. The Prodigal had returned — skinnier, filthy, and still wearing the dreaded head cone. We peeled it off, retrieved his food dish and opened a remaining can of cat food. Augie ate seconds and thirds. When picked up, he pushed his head into the crook of an elbow, unwilling to look at us. If cats could talk, he might have said, “I have sinned against thee. I am no longer worthy to be called your pet cat. Please accord me a corner of the garage for duties in catching mice.” His repentance speech included a recital of extra-loud purring. For a week, he refused to leave the house.
That was three years ago. His Christmas adventure didn’t cure him of the occasional need for vet trips and recovery cones. But never again has he taken such an extended vacation from his human family. Life is too good when you don’t have to worry where your next meal is coming from. Especially when Christmas might mean some turkey trimmings.
~Jeanne Zornes
