I thought our story, a true one, about our family’s loss and later recovery of our cat, Putty-Tat, couldn’t be beat.
Until I heard Donna MacDonald’s equally true story of what happened to her family’s cat, Ms. Kitty, shortly before Christmas 2007.
There are common threads in these two tales of cats gone missing, and there is a very obvious moral to both stories.
Our story occurred several years ago, when our two sons, Adam (now 27) and Abe (now 24), were both in elementary school. This would have been in the early 1990s. We were in the habit of letting Putty-Tat run free in the neighborhood. That’s a practice I now know is not wise, at least in the suburbs with their busy, cat-lethal streets and, yes, greedy humans. But we had migrated to Plymouth from such small southwestern Michigan towns as Marcellus (pop. ca 1,100 in 1980) and Berrien Springs (pop. ca. 2,000) , and we’d lived in the country for several years on farms where dogs and cats were allowed to roam.
When Putty-Tat failed to come home, Adam and Abe were distraught, and so were we. Several days went by, and there was no sign of Putty-Tat. We were afraid she’d been hit by a car, but we didn’t see any cat corpses in our neighborhood.
One day, a friend of Adam reported seeing a sign on a utility pole near West Middle School. It said a cat had been found and gave a phone number for its new home.
I called, and was invited to bring the boys over to see if they could identify the cat as Putty-Tat. The boys got in the car, and we drove to the house, several miles from our own. Too far for Putty-Tat to have roamed. Seemed strange. As soon as we saw the cat, we recognized Putty-Tat. And Putty-Tat knew the boys. She was very happy to see them, ran to them and wanted to be picked up and loved.
Putty-Tat’s new “owners” were a bit taken aback. I don’t think they expected a successful reunion. Gradually, the story emerged. They had seen Putty-Tat walking across the parking lot of a church near our house. “A stray!” they exulted, and scooped her up. Once they had Putty-Tat home, they decided the “stray” needed shots. They took her to a veterinarian, who told them this was no stray or feral cat. Her coat was sleek and she was obviously well-fed and in excellent health.
In short, the cat belonged to somebody. She had a home. Kids to play with. Kids and their parents who missed her, worried about her.
So they put up the sign on a telephone pole, and we called. We took Putty-Tat home that day. The story had a happy ending.
But a few years later, I had an insight into the kind of thinking that drives people to decide a cat on the street is a “stray” that they are morally compelled to adopt. It was summer 1995, and I was on strike at the Free Press. A crew of us striking reporters and assistant city editors were picketing outside a Detroit Newspaper Agency distribution building in Livonia. A very pretty, well-groomed cat would visit us as we stood talking around five or so in the morning. One of our members was convinced this cat had no home. She wanted badly to take it. I looked at the cat. Like Putty-Tat, this cat appeared well-nourished and in no need of help. But my friend was insisting the cat was a stray. It was wishful thinking. I argued, and eventually succeeded in convincing my friend that what she proposed was not a “do-good” act, but catnapping pure and simple.
Donna MacDonald works at Wayne State University’s Institute of Gerontology, and our mutual friend Cheryl Deep suggested she tell me her amazing story. Here, in Donna’s words, is the story of how kids, Anna, 14, Erica 12, Olivia 6, and Aidan 4, lost their calico cat, Ms. Kitty, as she patrolled their neighborhood in Novi. She tells me “Erica and Aidan are in the picture as they are the ones who went all out to find the cat. The cat actually was Erica’s Christmas present last year so we used Ms. Kitty again this year as part of her gift”.
“On the evening of November 28th, my husband’s birthday,” Donna wrote, “Ms. Kitty took off out of the house as soon as the kids held the door open long enough. It wasn’t the first time, so we weren’t worried because she had been outside many times before. When she didn’t come home by morning, I was worried and my daughter Erica and I put out about 400 e-mails to all the people in our school community and also hung about 30 posters around the four adjacent subs as well as our own. We didn’t hear a word about Ms. Kitty until I received a phone call from my friend and then the story unfolded.
“My friend called on December 12th and calmly asked if I had found my kitty. I told her “no,” and she said she had a story to tell me. She said that a man in my subdivision had found a stray cat and had taken it in his home to keep. This man kept the cat about a week or so and found out that he had allergies to cats and thought he needed to find a home for this wonderful, loving cat that he had found. He went down to his work place at Compuware in downtown Detroit and told people down there that he was looking for a home for this stray cat he had found and there of course was a cat lover in the group who said, “Sure, I’ll take it”. This lady happens to live in Royal Oak so the lady came to Novi and took the cat to Royal Oak. A few days later, this lady had her parents over for dinner and of course this couple fell in love with the cat and the daughter said they could take it home with them.
“The couple who live in Dearborn Heights loaded Ms. Kitty in their car and away she went. This elderly couple took the kitty to the vet, got her shots, bought a big bag of toys for the cat and provided many hours of lap holding. They happened to be talking to their daughter-in-law on the phone and were telling her of how they came upon this new love in their life, Ms. Kitty, and their daughter-in-law said, “That’s funny, my friend in Novi
is missing a calico cat”.
“She forwarded the e-mail I had sent with Ms. Kitty’s photo on it and sure enough, her in-laws had my cat.
“After a couple of phone calls to clarify that it was my cat and get directions, I went down the following day to pick up Ms. Kitty from the elderly couple who had fallen in love with Ms. Kitty. I felt guilty taking this cat from them, but my own four children had been depressed over our missing pet. It is funny because the day I got the news that Ms. Kitty had been found I had just forwarded my application to adopt a new kitty for my children. Things work in mysterious ways. You talk about six degrees of separation and here is a true story of it, six people away from knowing someone.
“I found out yesterday, when I spoke with my Novi friend, that the man who had Ms. Kitty only lives about seven houses away, which tells me kitty was not lost. She was just visiting, as cats always do.
“Point is, never pick up a stray, they have a home, you just don’t know it. Not sure why this man did not respond to one of the many posters in our subdivision, it could have prevented heart ache on the parts of my children and this elderly couple.
“I did recommend to the couple to look at Oakland County Senior Services who have an adoption program for cats and they pay for the food and kitty litter for two months and at that point you just have to pay the license fee of $8.00. Not sure if they will follow through, but working at the Institute of Gerontology, I felt compelled to help this little couple out.”
There is another cautionary side to these three stories of aborted catnappings. Chance and the sharp eyes of a friend brought about the homecomings of our and Donna’s cats. My pointed arguments dissuaded someone from stealing a third cat. But how many cats that “disappear” actually were pilfered by people who no doubt pat themselves on the back for being great humanitarians, when in fact they’ve stolen a car beloved by some family?
There are a couple lessons here — first, don’t let your cats roam where they might run afoul of predatory humans, drivers that see them too late, rival cats and your neighbor’s (or your own) rat poison.
The main lesson is for those good-hearted folks in need of animal companionship. That “stray” cat or dog most likely has a home with people who love it.
If you want to adopt a real stray, try the animal pound or the Humane Society.
Contact Joel Thurtell at joelthurtell(a)gmail.com
