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Published on 08/04/1999 All articles from this issue

Lost cat alert

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By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

"Lost Pet" signs are common in our Hills, and we are ever on the alert for strays. What is more rewarding than the happy faces of an anxious family when a beloved pet is returned to the fold?

So, when we read the most recent sign, Cris and I wondered if the cat who'd been hanging out at our place off and on for several weeks could be the "gray and beige Abyssinian kitty" of the posters we'd noted on trees and telephone poles.

A whimsical note was struck with "weighs 5 pounds," a singularly slender puss, and our visiting feline was such a one.

"We could catch it and weigh it," I suggested. But we soon found this wouldn't work. The cat proved elusive. It clawed up the birch tree to the overhang to regard us with a detached stare, followed by a derisive "meow!"

This was a moot point, in any case. This cat had been appearing and disappearing from our patio for some time. The "lost cat" signs had gone up only recently. Our visitor evidently came to our place for the abundant supply of lizards, which she seemed to fancy. (Ours are some of the few remaining not-formally landscaped-left-in-the-raw acres where lizards and deer still run rampant.)

The cat seemed lean and hungry as Shakespeare's Cassius, and often we were tempted to offer chicken livers, or poached salmon, resisting only because of the bell about its neck.

This we'd learned from experience with a kitten we brought home years ago when we left our New York apartment for a Palo Alto rental where our sons could realize their dream of a pet not confined to a fish bowl.

Shortly after we settled in, new neighbors arrived with their toddler, a dainty dish who coveted and fed our pet. Kittens did what kittens do in such situations. Ours moved in.

Since our neighbors were cat people, we found a scruffy mutt at the pound and hoped they would remain impervious to its charms.

We'd learned not to feed other people's pets, but in the recent heat wave when the visiting cat stretched out on our cool flagstone threshold and meowed piteously, we came close.

"It's hungry!"

"Don't feed it!"

We didn't, but the spectre of hunger haunted my dreams.

On my next loop through the hills I noted a "lost cat" sign still posted on the corner eucalyptus.

As I hiked up the summit and started the downward stretch to home, our neighbor, Roger Burnell and his Joelle drew alongside in their snappy Mercedes roadster, with the top down. Roger pointed to the "lost cat" sign on the tree.

"Would you pull that down, please?"

I tried. The sign didn't budge.

"Try it with both hands!"

I yanked. It yielded. "You! All this time it was yours!"

As Cris and I surmised, the cat is a resident and indeed does weigh a mere 5 pounds.

We'd seen the Burnell's golden retrievers often, but their cat had remained but a mysterious presence appearing and disappearing like the Cheshire cat's grin in "Alice..." What a pity we'd never met kitty before. Cris and I could have spared the Burnells weeks of worry.

What remains a mystery still is why the Abyssinian left home, what her activities were, why she arrived hungry on our doorstep and why her special cat radar prompted her to go home at last.

."Hunger," Cris said laconically. "If we'd fed her, the Burnells would still be searching."

Yes, indeed. The ways of a cat are strange and wonderful and shrouded in mystery, which is why we are ever intrigued.

Mary Cristy is a Los Altos Hills-based free-lance writer and longtime contributor to the Town Crier.