Near my gym there is a pet boutique*** that I therefore pass by very frequently. Last autumn on Sunday mornings before they were open, I would often see a cat sitting outside their entrance. This cat was remarkable for two reasons. First of all, it was quite friendly and personable. It would meow at you as you walked past and allow you to pet it. But secondly and more remarkably, it was huge. Very furry, fat, and all-over big, it was approximately 3.5 Evil Kitty's in size. I mentioned it to D, as in "I wish you could see how big this cat is!" and then managed to get a picture of it with my phone (which was highly unsatisfactory, since without anything next to it for context, you couldn't appreciate the size.)
At some point I realized there was actually a poster about the cat in the pet shop's window, saying *his* name was Lucy, that he had a happy home in the neighborhood and just liked to come visit, and that, basically, you shouldn't be concerned if you saw him hanging out on the sidewalk. A few weeks ago, D asked me whether I ever saw him anymore and I said I hadn't, but that he was probably, like Evil Kitty RIP, an outdoor cat only in the nicest of weather. Now that the snow was gone and it was warming up, I'd probably start seeing him again.
Cut to last Friday. I was coming home on the bus, and an old man got on carrying a large, meowing cat. I sorta assumed he was taking the cat to the vet (since the bus stops directly in front of the vet Evil Kitty used to go to) and didn't own a pet carrier. Kind of weird, but both old people and people who take the bus can be kind of weird, so put the two together, y'know? The bus driver told the man he would have to sit in the back with the loudly meowing cat, which he did. Now, the thing is, when you go on public transportation with a pet, people will talk to you, even at evening commute time. People love animals. And so the other people in the back were chatting to the old man. I didn't pay much attention. I was tired and kind of zoning out, thinking about what to have for dinner and so forth.
And then I heard the old man say that, no, he didn't know if it were a boy or a girl, and that if he held it up, did he think the woman talking to him could tell him? At this point I was pretty convinced the old man's deck was missing a few aces. If you know what I mean. Then he explains that, no, the cat wasn't actually his cat. That it was wandering around downtown and that he figured it didn't have a home, so he was taking it to his house. As he was about to get off the bus, it suddenly hit me. Holy shit. That big meowing cat is probably Lucy and the old man was kid(cat)napping it!
When I was telling D about this, two thoughts came to mind. First of all, could you just imagine a stranger trying to pick up Evil Kitty and bring her on a bus? Deep bleeding multiple flesh wounds. A little evilness is protective. Secondly, where the man got off was about a mile down the road. I maintained that if the cat were able to get outside, it could probably find its way home from there. Don't they have a kind of homing instinct? (When I was a little kid, my aunt and uncle moved to Cali and left their cat with my mom. That cat kept repeatedly returning to its old house. That wasn't a mile away, but still, I think they know where they live.) D thinks I am wrong.
Anyway, I am going to keep my eyes peeled around the pet shop and the immediate neighborhood, and if any missing posters about Lucy go up, I will drop a dime. Not sure how it will help, since they can't go on a door to door canvas of the elderly housing project near where the old guy got off the bus, but at least they will know the cat's alive.
xoxo
***There's actually more than one, while the chichi baby boutique also in the immediate vicinity appears to have gone out of business. Take any sociological message from this that you wish.
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