While downtown, Alice saw a child with an orange kitten riding on her shoulder. She approached the child who said, “I am giving our cat’s kittens away. It is the only one left.” Alice had two dogs and four cats, so she did not need another pet. Besides, her attorney husband, Henry, would flip if she brought one home. But, a minute later Alice walked away with the free, fluffy feline wondering what to tell Henry.
“When I arrived home,” said Alice, “I calculatingly placed the kitten on his lap to bond. I turned so he couldn’t ‘read’ my face preventing cross examination and said, ‘In the morning, she’s going to the animal shelter.’”
It worked! Ten minutes later, Henry called out, “Honey! There is no need to find Lady Edwina another home. She has one here.” Alice smiled at her premeditated adoption. Even though Henry was a brilliant lawyer, she is an amazingly clever kitty con artist.
Henry and Alice’s cats have an enclosed outdoor area that prevents them from falling prey to coyotes. Five years later, in November, Edwina somehow escaped. The frantic couple posted LOST flyers, notices in the newspaper, and wandered the streets calling her.
November turned into December. Alice was not to be deterred, she put up $500 reward posters. As the weather grew colder, Henry gently told Alice, “It’s been six weeks. You have to realize that Edwina is gone. She won’t be back. We have to let her go.”
After Christmas, Alice, still not giving up, put up another round of posters. In late January, their neighbor’s ten-year-old son said, “I saw your orange cat in our yard.”
“We’d had several phone calls from people who thought they had seen our cat,” said Alice. “Unfortunately, when we went to look, it wasn’t her. As I followed the boy he added, ‘I saw her in our basement.’”
So, they descended into a dark-murky basement being remodeled. Alice peered around and saw new wallboard behind the furnace.
She walked in that direction and was paws-itive that she heard a faint meow. She called, “Edwina” and a cat mewed back. The boy ran for his father. The man ripped off the dry wall. Alice squinted into the dark and saw cat’s eyes. She flashed a light beam towards them - and THERE was Edwina!
Edwina was free, but her pitch black, three-month confinement left her dehydrated, starved and her eyes were glassed over.
“I ran her home,” said Alice. “Henry took her from me, cradled her in his arms, and for the first time I saw him cry. The hard-core attorney then drove “his” kitty to the veterinarian. The vet could not believe that Edwina had survived. ‘There is no reason that she is alive,’ he said. ‘She was hours away from unconsciousness, and it is a miracle that she could meow being so dehydrated. She must have survived by licking condensation from the furnace and eating bugs.’
What happened after we arrived home was equally as shocking! My tough attorney turned into an excited little boy because his beloved cat was back. In his elation, he phoned his golfing buddies, grown children, business partners, government official friends (even one in Australia) exclaiming, ‘My cat is home!’”
It took Edwina several months to recover, and when she was held, petted, or talked to, she happily purred and kneaded her paws.
Edwina went on to live in the lap of luxury, until her 20th birthday and she never wandered out of the yard again.
Note:
Four years later, Henry became bedridden and through his illness the two of them curled up together in the covers wrapped in love. “His” cat, Lady Edwina, never left his bedside.
