1 Down 8 To Go

The truth is, you don't mourn for an animal like you would a person.  You grieve for a few days, suck it up and you move on.  That's just the way that life goes.  You enter the arraignment fully aware that it's only going to be for a few years, unlike people who have the potential to go 80, 90 even 100 years; dogs and cats are ancient if they make it a decade and a half.  So by Sunday we were doing our best to let Fila go.  That's not to say we didn't double take at night time shadows passing by the window or look around extra diligently when we walked to our cars in the morning.  But, we'd accepted that she was gone.  Then Sunday came.  I brought the girls home from breakfast with my mom and sister and I'd just gotten them into beds for nap time when my phone rang with an unlisted number.  I have a policy that I don't answer unlisted numbers, but for some reason I did.  An older woman on the other line said she had a young cat who had my phone number around her neck. ... I about dropped the phone.  Turns out that the night she'd gone missing she found her way into the backyard of a woman down the street (of course it's right on the one big street that runs through our area).  After the initial encounter the woman didn't see her again until Friday night when she found her in her garage.  The woman had a cat door cut into the side of their garage door and Fila must have sought shelter in there.  The thing I'm wondering about is why the woman waited two days to finally call me?!  I have a  feeling that upon finding such a nice cat she was going to keep her, but Fila's deviated septum and the resulting snort/snoring noise she makes finally drove the woman crazy and she changed her mind.  Either way, I picked her up and as we went outside to walk home she dug her nails into my chest in terror, not unlatching until we got back inside. 5 days in the wild and she's lost all interest in exploring.  Then she slept for 48 hours straight.  She's a little skinny, she's got some cuts on her face and she's got a slight limp in her back leg - but hey, it's a whole lot better then being dead, right?!  When the girls woke up from their nap. ... let's just "excited" doesn't do the emotion justice.  So that's 1 life down, 8 left to go.