Yesterday evening, as Richard opened the door for the Door Dash dinner delivery, Sherman raced outside.
It was dark out, and we wandered around frantically looking for him with flashlights, but had no success. I needed to go deliver a foster cat to the center (she’s ready for adoption now), so I left reluctantly, leaving Richard to continue searching. He went around the entire block, knocked on doors to ask the neighbors to check their backyards. No one had seen any sign of him. We eventually decided that we would go back out this morning as soon as it was light out, to do a more thorough search, since there are too many dark places he could have hidden.
I slept upstairs last night on the couch, since that’s closest to the front door, and woke up every couple hours to check outside. We put a plate of food by the door to try to lure him in. Every time one of the foster kittens or the other cats made a sound I was wide awake, rushing to the front door, peering outside, looking around, hoping it was him.
This morning I looked out the window and saw a grey form walking across the yard. I dashed to the front door and called him, and he sauntered up the front steps and came right through the open door. And the second he was safely inside I picked him up and then promptly burst into tears of relief.
He’s been spending pretty much every moment since he came back in sprawled out on one of the large heating pads in the living room. It was extremely cold outside last night and I’m sure he’s relieved to back where it’s warm and dry. I’ve carefully pulled two burrs out of his fur already and will be checking repeatedly for more, just in case, and he’ll be getting some flea meds once he wakes up, just in case he picked up any unwanted friends.
One of my biggest fears is that some day, he (or another cat) will get outside and *won’t* come back; that they will just disappear and I will never know what happened to them. Right now, though, he is safe. I have to stop thinking about the ‘what ifs’ and focus instead on the fact that this time it turned out okay. This time there was a happy ending.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
Whew! As much as I’d like to think he learned his lesson…. No. He’ll absolutely do it again if he can.