Cheezit

So my mom’s cat went missing. He’s this big, beastly orange creature with a loud cry and a coarse fur. I kind of can’t stand him.

But my mom and step-dad adore this monster. So when he went missing on a Monday, they were understandably upset. My mom went so far as to drive the around the country block to see if she could see him in the ditch or along the side of the road. She just wanted to know.

I didn’t find out that he was missing until the Thursday after he’d been gone since Monday.

The girls and I had visited my mom that Monday. When we got there, my step-dad’s brother and nephew were also visiting. My step-dad (have I ever given him a blog name? No? Yes? I feel like I did and that I called him Lloyd. So yes, let’s go with that.) Lloyd and his nephew J were out on the deck shooting a gun. Yes, surely you can hear my eyes rolling over that one.

But whatever. They were doing that. Cheezit the cat had greeted us when we arrived, as he does. He loves guests and always lays on the cement, rolling around showing his tummy and begging for scritches and scratches.

I ignore him and Olivia screeches when he comes near but Alyssa always stops and pets the creep.

He didn’t come running to see us off that evening when we left but since Lloyd and J were shooting the gun, maybe Cheezit had gone into hiding.

When the girls and I got home, we heard a cat crying from inside the garage but Tom insisted that it was Leo, who happened to be on the front porch. We accepted his explanation and went about our evening. Now? I’m not so sure the crying was Leo.

Liv and I visited my mom and Lloyd on Thursday afternoon. Lyss was at work.

It was then that my mom told me that Cheezit had been missing since Monday. They’d called Lloyd’s brother and the nephew J to see if maybe Cheezit had climbed into the back of J’s truck and hitched a ride to his farm.

No. He hadn’t been seen.

My mom worried that the cat HAD gotten into the truck but then jumped out along the way and hadn’t been able to find his way home. The night he’d gone missing the weather had been awful. Rain and wind had swept in, which could have disoriented him.

I got home that night and told Tom about this missing kitty. He said something about having seen another cat around our house, thinking it might be Harvey (who’s been gone for about two months now) but that this phantom cat was darker than Harv. And it definitely wasn’t Leo, who is bigger than Harv but a much lighter orange than Cheezit.

Friday morning as I was heading off to work, Tom opened the garage door and said, “That’s your moms’ cat!”

What?!?

When he’d opened the door, Leo waltzed into the garage like he owned the place (I mean, he kind of does) and the other cat, the one that turned out to be Cheezit, had run. But he hadn’t run far. He’d gone to the front porched and laid himself out on the bottom step, like it was some sort of boudoir.

I called his name and he just looked at me. I picked him up. He’s enormous, it was definitely Cheezit.

I told Tom I was going to take him home. Going past my mom’s on my way to work is only about a mile out of my way.

That cat cried the entire drive to my mom’s house. It’s only four miles but it felt like forty with that animal wailing all the way there.

He also prowled the car, moving from the front seat to the dash, where he tried to sit IN FRONT OF MY FACE. I told him he had to move so I could, you know, SEE TO DRIVE.

He finally went to the back of the car where he continued to scream.

I talked to him the entire drive, telling him what a good kitty he is (he’s not) and how glad his mom and dad were going to be to see him. I told him he was going home and that it would be okay.

When we pulled into the driveway, he looked out the window and almost lost his mind. I know animals don’t think the way humans do but I swear that cat KNEW he was home.

I managed to get him out of the car and into my arms. The TV was on so I knew someone was awake.

I took Cheezit into the sunroom and knocked on the kitchen door.

Lloyd came to the door and saw that I was holding his cat.

When he opened the door, I said, “He was on our front porch this morning. He must have gotten into my car on Monday and we just never saw him.”

Which, you know what? That makes no sense. The way that cat reacted to the drive back to my mom’s, if he’d been inside my car, we’d have known it and Olivia would have lost her own mind dealing with a yowling cat in the backseat with her.

What I think might have happened is that he found a spot under the car, like somewhere under the hood and managed to not get mangled by the engine.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that Lloyd was near tears with relief to have that monster back in his arms. He was holding and petting Cheezit when I left, murmuring about how glad it was to have him home.

It was nice to see a man and his cat reunited. I felt like I’d done my good deed for the month.