This is a true story from over the weekend. Except the truth is even stranger, because the missing poster for this cat had more than just the usual name, size, general cat info — it was a 5 paragraph sob story with actually very few useful details other than a picture of the cat’s dumb face. No weight, no identifying marks, just that the owner “loved him to distraction” and drove quite far to buy him.
When I got in touch with her, yards away from where she presumably lives because of the amount of posters on that one street, she insisted that he couldn’t be lost, he must have been kidnapped. He was right there in the bush! I was looking at him! My dog was barking at him! She wouldn’t come look.
Amazingly, she texted me this morning to say that he did indeed come home last night, after being missing for a week. I suspect he’d have been found sooner if she hadn’t been so convinced that he was being held for ransom, too intelligent to be living in a bush at the end of her driveway. I didn’t ask about a reward, and one wasn’t offered.
Here’s a bonus lost cat cartoon from my sketchbook, inspired by the worst missing poster I’ve ever seen, one upon a time in Venice Beach (attached below).
