I was living with my beautiful cousin L and my three cats, CJ , Star and Amy, in a fourplex next to a ravine. We had the top floor on one side of the building with a beautiful river view. Aside from the peeling wallpaper in the bathroom, the mustard yellow tub and toilet and the 70s inspired appliances, it was a great suite.
One day CJ was gone. Just gone. He must have escaped, we have no idea how. Since we lived next to a ravine, I figured that was where he went. The thing about CJ is that he is an inside cat. I am certain that he never knew how to hunt and may not be able protect himself in a dangerous situation. He definitely knew nothing about cars. We had raccoons and coyotes in this neighbourhood too.
My intuition told me that he was still alive. My fear said that he had already been eaten. I was raised to pay attention to the intuition, so we started looking. This was a the very same time I started dating my now husband, R. R came over and helped us comb the ravine as much as we could. It actually had very dense growth, with lots of blackberry bushes and steep banks. The perfect place for a freaked out kitty to hunker down and a terrible place for the humans to go looking.
We searched for a few days, calling his name. I made sure that we had food, water and a familiar smelling blanket out on the back patio for him, just in case. A couple of weeks later, there was still no sign of the little guy, but my intuition continued to say that he was still alive.
After much contemplation, I decided that the next step was to rent a live animal trap. I set it up on the back patio. For the next four weeks, I checked the trap every morning and many times through the night. I caught many different cats. Some were freaked out. Some sat quietly, patiently waiting to be set free. There was this one cat that wanted to kill me, or at the very least scratch my eyes out. He was particularly tricky to set free, but we ended the exchange with no blood shed by either of us. All of this and still no CJ.
Now, I am an avid movie fan. I am also a fan of some fantasy stories. This was around the time that the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was being released. This is an important side note because I didn't wait to see the movies at the normal time, nope, too much of a keener. Instead I went to the midnight showings. Well, these movies are three hours long, so I would get home in the wee early morning hours and then go to work the next day.
During the time of CJ's first great escape, the Lord of The Rings: Return of the King was released to theaters. I came home somewhere around 3am. I got all ready for bed and crawled in, super sleepy. Suddenly, I popped out of bed. My intuition bells were ringing. I ran out to the trap and checked. Sure enough, six weeks later, there is my little, tiny, super skinny CJ!
I gasped and quickly brought the whole trap into my bedroom. I didn't want to wake up L but I was so excited to see my cat. At this point, all felines had been banished from my bedroom, since I am actually allergic to them, but this was a special day. I let CJ out. He was fur, skin and bones (note: before the escape, CJ was a great big chubby guy). His eyes were buggy and his coat was quite ratty. I got him some water, and put him on my bed, thinking he might curl up and cuddle. Boy was I wrong. He told me, for the rest of the night, or what was left of it, all about his adventures. I don't think he ever meowed as much as he did then.
The next morning, I called into work saying that I would be late and took him to the vets. They gave me some special canned food and instructions on getting him slowly back into shape.
It must have been a grand adventure, but I was relieved that he was home.
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