Lost Kitten

It was Saturday and the whole family was going to the park for a picnic. As Dave was taking things out to the car, the girls were excitedly hovering around him as he exited the front door, and he barked for them to shut the door before the cat escaped. We have two kittens and one of them likes to run outside. Living in the hills above Los Angeles we have heard many stories of small animals disappearing, presumably hunted by the large coyote population. So we keep the cats inside, which goes against my nature. I like to let animals roam freely and I trust them to protect themselves and acquire their street smarts by having urban adventures. I had recently been letting Tabitha, the one that likes to escape, go out on her own and every time she got herself back in, or waited by the door to be let in. So I wasn’t too worried when I saw her making her dash for the door. I watched as she scooted out and ran to the little clump of plants out front, a favorite spot of hers. I told Dave I would get some food to lure her back in while he got the girls strapped into their seats.

When I got back outside with a dish of smelly wet cat food, I couldn’t find her in the bushes. I went all around, carefully looking between the plants, calling her name and tapping the dish. Where could she have gone? Anywhere was the answer. We looked around the periphery of the house, while the girls were getting upset inside the car and Dave and I were getting agitated with the frustration of her fast disappearance and the mounting fear of losing her. We left the food out and told the girls she would hopefully be there when we got back.

Moments after driving away from the house the girls had moved on to other concerns and my own was drifting away. We had a nice time at the park, eating salads and sandwiches on the grass and watching a local drill team practice their cheers. Grace rode her scooter around and around the playground while Dave napped and Frances and I watched the cheer leaders.

When we got home it took a minute before we remembered Tabitha was missing. We looked for her again around the edges of the property and I peeked into the neighbors’ yards. But no luck. She was nowhere. The rest of the day we left the front and back doors open and locked Twyla, the other kitten, in a back bedroom so that she would not try the same thing.

As it started to get dark we all began to worry some more. Each of us quietly blaming ourselves for not shutting the door fast enough and letting her escape. Dusk is when all good kittens need to be safe inside. I thought of Tabitha, almost full grown but still very much a kitten, out in the wilds by herself. I assumed she was probably a block or two away by now and maybe lost. I imagined she was frightened. I gave the girls a bath and Grace started making plans to get another kitten, something she has been angling for ever since we got these two six months ago. I explained that we needed to keep Tabitha’s space open for her to come back. “If we start talking about replacing her now, its like we are shutting the door on her.” Two hours later we reluctantly shut the front and back doors when we went to bed. Dave put more food out along with her bed which he put in a cardboard box with a big hole she could crawl through.

I went out to my studio to pray. I felt a horrible hole in my chest. I had not considered my attachment to Tabitha until that moment. I was the one who picked her out at the Humane Society. We had gone there to pick out two kittens, one for Grace’s birthday and another one to keep it company. I had a strong connection to this beautiful tabby when I looked into her eyes. I felt something. A surge of affection and warmth, and a kind of knowing. She reminded me of my cat Jane who had died two years earlier. Jane had an outsized lifespan, having been my companion for the twenty two years in between graduating from college and middle age. This kitten had the same spunk, the same kind of charisma that Jane had. I knew she would lead an interesting life. Grace picked a yellow Tabby and named her Twyla.

Grace named the one I picked out Tabitha, and she had become the difficult child. She grabbed food off the counter, she got into things she shouldn’t. She consumed rubber bands and knocked things over. It was like having a puppy in the house. Twyla on the other hand was sweet and demure, never getting into trouble and rarely biting our hands. Tabitha was feisty and had brought Frances to tears more than once by scratching her.

But I was not complaining about her as I prayed. I was making promises. I promised not to lose my temper when she attacked the broom while I swept. I promised not to scold her when she pawed the falling litter as I refilled her cat box, making it spill everywhere. I promised to play with her more and scratch her belly every chance I had. I was feeling how much I loved this kitten. Tears were streaming down my face as I spoke to her and pleaded with her to come back, telling her that we couldn’t live without her.

When I went to bed I felt an old familiar feeling in my heart. The sinking feeling that life as you know has been irrevocably changed. “I am worried about her,” my voice carrying all my sadness across the covers. Dave’s response was exactly how I felt: “It makes you realize how much a part of this family she really is.”

The next morning I opened the front door to see the empty box with her cat bed inside and the plate devoid of food. I let myself indulge in the fantasy that it was she who had eaten it. I was making breakfast for the girls when I heard the sound of a cat mewing. I knew this sound of a kitten in distress well and I knew it was her. I flashed to the time I had rescued Jane from a neighboring yard in Brooklyn so many years ago. I yelled to the girls, who were playing in the living room, “I hear Tabitha!” and ran outside to look for her, but she was no where. I could hear but not see her. I ran to the backyard and could hear her cries were close, but where was she? Finally I looked up and found her above me, in a tree! Oh she was beautiful and it was a magnificent sight to see her again. My heart sang, “Tabitha!” But she was in a bad situation. She was walking along a limb that was twenty feet over my head and too narrow for her to turn around on. She kept walking out further and further on the limb while she cried. The branch hung over our roof but it seemed too far for her to jump from my angle. I was thinking we would have to call the fire department when I told Grace, “Get Daddy!” Dave climbed up on the roof and stood at the edge, under the branch she was on. There was at least a foot between them, but he was able to pull the branch down and grab her out of the leaves. He held her inside his jacket as he climbed down the ladder.

She was a different cat now. She had spent a night out and she had survived. In my worried state I had allowed my mind to conjure images of her returning home with cuts and bruises and a piece of her ear missing, like Elsa in Born Free. But she was healthy, clean and beautiful as ever. And proud of herself, which she deserved to be. We were changed too. We have been showering her with love and affection ever since, now fully appreciating her in a way that we hadn’t been.

It has got me thinking about how deep love travels and how fast it takes root in the heart. I really had no idea how much I loved her until she went missing. The desperation I felt as I prayed for her safe return was more than I expected to feel for this newcomer, this kitten who we have had in our family for just a few months. The experience of a temporary loss was enough to wake me up to the fact that I love her fiercely, a fact that I had been sort of ignoring. I suppose, looking back, I was reluctant to love another cat as I had my old friend Jane. And it was a reminder of how strong love is. How quietly it can grow without making me notice it until I have to. And how astounding, to have so much love, and to feel it so completely.