That which was lost......

...has been found. I find it amazing that this little cat, turned back up. Her name is Dixie, and she has never been one to stay close to the house. This time however I had not seen her for at least two months and maybe even three. I was about to write her off--literally--and list her as 'missing' in my Animal Record book.

Her story is a bit unique in that another cat, named Chet showed up here one day and moved in. While this story isn't about him, he was quite the character and didn't give me much choice about his moving in. Several months later, he moved in what I think was his sister (Dixie). First he put her up in the ruins behind the house, but made sure that he pointed out to me where she was. She was pretty friendly, but scared of everything. So I started feeding her, of course. It didn't take to many days until I realized that he had moved in his pregnant sister! Two weeks to the day she showed up, she birthed four little grey kittens. Three looked similar to her and one was a darker tiger grey. She had them under a pile of junk and was quite content. I wasn't raising any wild kittens though, so rudely stole the kittens and moved them to a cage that I had set up in the yard. Reluctantly she followed them down here. She was a pistol when she had kittens. She is so timid that she runs from everything, but not then. Any of the cats even looked towards her precious babies and she would attack them and run them off. Except Chet. She always let Chet hang out with her and the kittens. She would even leave him to kitty-sit on occasion. So, she was such a devoted mom, I promised her she could keep one of the kittens, but not all. I found homes for three of them, and let her keep Echo---I silvery tabby like herself, except that Echo has stripes and Dixie has swirls.

Shortly thereafter, Dixie decided she could care less about being a mom and took to leaving for long periods of time. She has done that to this day. Usually in the winter she will stay closer, and curl up with her daughter during the cold nights.

This is the first time she had completely abandoned us though. She really looks pretty good, although, I think her eyes look sad. Physically she is in decent shape. I put some flea control stuff on her, and hopefully she'll come back so I can worm her. She ate an entire can of cat food (she formally hated canned cat food!) and some of the dry.

When I was moving the Shetland rams this morning, I saw a leg and tail of a cat curled up on the back stoop of an empty house my parents own. I was sure it looked like Dixie instead of Echo (because of the swirls), but I feared getting my hopes up. I walked over there and kept calling her. At first she was skittish and kept dashing a little away, and then coming up to me etc. Finally though she gave in to a vigorous petting session, meowing the whole time about it all. She then followed me the short distance to the house and chowed down on the food I offered. I'm very happy she is alive and well, even if I don't approve of her lifestyle! ;-) Very strange. But then cats often are.....