Finding a Cat

February 2001

Sunday

Oscar the cat, small, with large fur, escapes through a door left open for his owner while she sings, “I bin workin’ onna ray road,” and rides her red tricycle through the snow in the back yard.

Megan and I note the absence of cat, and park the red tricycle. We search for Oscar carefully around the perimeter of the house and half-heartedly down the back alley. Oscar has run away before, after all, and returned nonchalantly on his own. He had been unthankful for two Lost Pet advertisements – in fact had not even stayed lost until the newspapers were delivered – and for the 25 flyers delivered to houses in the neighborhood. He had not been in attendance for detailed descriptions, to five local animal establishments, of a creamy-orange-long-haired-cat-male-neutered-no-collar-no-tattoo (and not a micro-chip either, no, yes, I realize he should at least have one of those).

Darkness and snow are beginning to fall. This search lacks the devotion of those responsible pet owners who spawn stories like Miracle Dog: Travelled 1000 Miles to find Owner! We return home catless.

Monday

I expect Oscar to come back voluntarily. Granted, his last cat-venture lasted a full 52 hours, but it’s colder this time. I open the door at 20 minute intervals and call, “Oscar, Oscar,” into the falling snow. The forecast is for a low of minus 17. Oscar, the stupid cat, does not appear.

Tuesday

Tonight’s anticipated low, with wind chill, is minus 30.

Oscar’s owner and I wait until dark, as instructed by the knowledgeable animal shelter person whose cat has a microchip. We take our flashlights out – my heavy-duty black shop light and a green frog that shines out of its mouth when Megan pushes a button between his eyes.

Like dutiful mail carriers, we stay on the sidewalks and use our lights to reach under hedges and front steps and into back yards. Megan calls, “Oscar we love you! Oscar we miss you!” as we weave our way from house to house.

From the fourth yard, a cat’s eyes shine back at us like a tiny car parked beside the garage. It’s a black cat – not Oscar – but we keep our lights on it until it grows bored and slinks away. A cat is better than no cat.

We traverse two blocks of sidewalks and houses and yards, and then call off the search until morning.

Wednesday

It’s very cold, still minus 27 when I start the car in the morning. I look for tracks around the house, down the back alley, through front yards. And there are tracks – some old, some new. They could be going in either direction, depending on which way I look at them. I’m sure a real animal tracker would know which way the cat was going. I think about borrowing a cat and making it walk through the snow.

I call the five animal institutions again (thankfully they have forgotten me), and I make 25 bright orange “Have you seen Oscar…?” flyers. Megan and I deliver them as soon as we get home, to all same houses we delivered to three months earlier.

The lady in 4116 opens the door just as we deliver the flyer, and we wait while she reads it. She looks up in amazement. “You still haven’t found the cat?”

At night we take our frog light and our shop light and go hunting for tiny cat headlights. Megan finds the street name that was printed into the sidewalk when it was poured. “Look, mom!” she says, “I found some words! I think it’s a clue!”

Thursday

There are no real clues – only endless cat tracks. Are they Oscar’s? Or some ordinary cat that knows its way around and is out for a confident stroll?

By Thursday night it’s bitterly cold, and I can’t imagine any cat being out on purpose. The cat tracks lead from one yard to the next, disappear under trees and come out the other side, fade into tire tracks in the back alley. They lead everywhere except to a cat. We scrunch through the snow like noisy detectives. We have abandoned the sidewalks. We own the neighborhood now, know it inside out. We shine our lights under cars and trees, behind garbage bins, into sheds, under an old canoe propped up against someone’s garage. We leave a maze of human tracks behind us.

No cat.

Friday

On Friday night, I put Megan to bed, open the door and leave it open, watching TV with a blanket and a heating pad and my big coat on. Two shifts – 10 to 1:30, and 5 to 7:30.

No cat.

Saturday

No fresh tracks. I put a dish of food out on the back deck, wondering why I hadn’t thought of that before. Now I imagine Oscar too weak from hunger to find his way home, shivering quietly somewhere I haven’t thought to look.


I grow resentful of the neighbors in their warm houses watching television with their pets. Surely Oscar is somewhere. Somebody must have seen something! I wonder if the neighbors will remember my bright orange flyer come Spring when Oscar the cat thaws and begins to smell.

I take Megan to her big sister’s house and search off and on during the night. With my cell phone (in case I get stuck) I back my way under the deck. If it were summer, I’d be worried about spiders. Now, there are only three boards, the cement steps that led to the back door before the deck was built and a black and white sign that says, “Private – No Parking.”

No cat.

I wake up at 4 from a dream that Oscar came home. He was like the cat in Stephen King’s Pet Cemetary – matted, dirty and half-frozen. I get up and go hunting again. New snow falls like dust into old cat tracks in the dark, and the neighbors are asleep in their warm houses with their pets. I come home and take the screen out of the bathroom window, put a TV table in the tub for Oscar to land on and go to bed.

Sunday

No fresh tracks, but hunting seems the appropriate thing to do. I find a deck in a backyard that looks like a place I would go if I were a cat. I ring the doorbell. No one answers, so I go into the back yard and under the deck with my flashlight. More boards, some metal pipes and eight plant pots. No cat. I wonder what I would think if I found someone crawling out from under my deck on a Sunday morning.

In the afternoon, I look out the window and see fresh tracks that weren’t there an hour before. I glue Megan to the TV, grab my coat and dash out the door. I am the neighborhood mad-woman, dipping and weaving along the circuitous path of a cat. Through a new layer of snow, the tracks lead across three yards, a street, two more yards, another street and a house… and there they stop.

I ring the doorbell.

“Do you have a cat?” The Chinese man says no, he doesn’t have a cat. “Well, I’m looking for my cat, and the tracks I’m following stop here.” The Chinese man looks in his mailbox, and then closes the door. He thinks I’m accusing him of something. Maybe I am.

I go home and open the bathroom window and put the coffee table back in the tub.

At 2:30 in the morning I awake to a thud. Even before I’m completely awake, I know it’s Oscar. He squeaks out a tiny meow. I envision Pet Cemetary cat, and brace myself. But there he is – thin and dusty. No frost-bite, no distress, just plain old happy-to-be-home purring Oscar.

A cat.

He eats and drinks, and then I carry him into Megan’s room and put him on the bed beside her. She reaches out and begins petting him without even opening her eyes. “Megan,” I say, “Oscar came home.” She opens her eyes, and then hugs him.

“Mommy,” she says, “Don’t ever let me play outside again.”