Eight Lives Down, One To Go

We found Tuna Kitty today.  Now that she's home I can tell the complete story of her adventure.

We adopted Tuna Kitty and her brother, Gary, from a cat rescue.  They told us that the kittens had been thrown out of a vehicle on the freeway and a friend of the rescue saved them.  I figured then that out of their nine lives, our cats had already used up at least two. 

Then about a month ago, Tuna went missing in the night.  No matter how we called to her she did not come in.  Then around two in the morning, she was at the back door.  We never found out what happened to her that night, but she had a limp, a swollen face and a really bad attitude for several days.  So goes another life - down to six.

Last Sunday we packed up our things to leave for our family trip to Monterey.  We locked up the house, gave our animals a kiss and wished them luck (my brother Leo was house sitting again) and drove away in our motorhome.  One bumpy dirt road, three stop signs and five miles later, we merged on to Highway 99 at Dillard Road.  The car behind us swerved, catching Darrin's attention, and I heard Darrin yell, "Oh no, I think it's Tuna!" as he saw our kitty through his rearview mirror, spiraling out of control behind us, six or seven feet in the air.  Darrin pulled over as fast as he could, some two hundred yards from where it happened, and ran over to the area.  He searched and searched but could not find the kitty.  We drove the motorhome back around and he and I both searched the shoulder to no avail.  We were looking for our dead cat, because Darrin was certain that no cat could have survived falling off the motorhome, being hit by the car behind us, and falling seven feet down to the ground. 

The shoulder at Dillard and Highway 99 is very big, and has very dense weedy brush covering a ditchline.  On the other side of the ditch is a barbed wire fence, and on the other side of the fence is a huge open field, covered in six foot tall weedy shrubbery.  Darrin and I paced back and forth through the weeds for what seemed like forever, calling our kitty but knowing we wouldn't find her in good condition.  Meanwhile, we didn't want our kids to know that their kitten was now roadkill, so we tried to keep them from understanding what was going on.  Finally we decided there was nothing we could do, Tuna was a goner, and we got back into the motorhome (me trying to hide my sobs from the kids) and headed to Monterey. 

We had a fun trip, but Darrin and I were tormented all week long about our poor lost Tuna Kitty.  The what-if's set in and we began to talk whenever the kids weren't around to hear us:

What if she wasn't dead but only hurt?

What if she was okay and now she's lost in the field?

What if she starts trying to find her way home? 

What are we going to tell the kids?

We decided we were going to tell the kids that Tuna had been missing since we left, so they didn't blame Uncle Leo for losing her.  But then, the morning we were packing up to leave Monterey, Lia says out of nowhere, "Mommy, I just saw Tuna!"  My heart skipped a beat (thinking:  is it possible she could have gotten back on the motorhome and hidden for the past four days?!?).  I told her, "Lia, it's probably just a cat that looks like Tuna, but let's check it out".  Of course, we didn't find the kitty, but now Darrin and I had to come up with a different explanation so the kids didn't think that stray really WAS Tuna, and want us to travel back to Monterey to find her. 

So about an hour from home, we finally told the kids that Tuna had been at home with Uncle Leo, but hadn't come in the night before.  They seemed worried, but okay, and we talked about looking for her when we got home.  When Darrin pulled the motorhome off Highway 99 at Dillard, we made another attempt to look for her.  We searched the shoulder again, calling her name, but found nothing.  No body, no kitty.  We told the kids we were looking for Darrin's lost baseball glove that we thought had fallen off the motorhome. 

Then last night, at 10pm, Darrin went out to try again, hoping that she wouldn't be scared at night and would come to him if he called her.  Meanwhile, back at home, Ben was very upset that Tuna was missing.  "Mommy, I thought she would be home before night and I didn't even get to say goodbye."  As I wrote my blog about our missing kitty, Darrin came home empty handed and I knew, we weren't going to see Tuna again.  As I fell asleep I actually prayed that God would help us find our kitty so our kids didn't have to be disappointed in losing yet another pet. 

This morning I got up early to make an 8am conference call at work.  Leaving the house at 7am I decided to give it one last try.  I drove to the on-ramp at Dillard and 99 and called her name.  Nothing.  Then I drove a little further to the spot we lost her and called her name: TUNA!  MEOW.

What?!?  Was that a meow I heard?  I called her again:  TUNA!  Meow!  It was definitely a meow.  I started trampling down the weeds, headed in the direction of her little kitty voice.  TUNA!  Meow!  All of a sudden I saw the top of her tail over the weeds, headed in my direction.  That little kitty ran right up to me and snuggled into my chest when I picked her up.  I could not believe that she had survived five nights in the wild without us.  The whole ride home she meowed and snuggled into my neck.  I explained to her that after the motorhome ride, falling off, getting hit by a car, falling to the ground, and surviving in the wild, she had pretty much used up another five lives, and we had better be pretty cautious with the one that remained.  Five miles, three stop signs and one bumpy dirt road later, I brought our Tuna Kitty home. 

Even after all this time, the kids only know that Tuna wandered off and that I found her this morning "on the road".  They have no idea the ride that Tuna took, the trouble she went through, the torment that Darrin and I experienced all week, or even our sheer joy at finding Tuna.  Someday we will tell them this story, probably around the same time they find out how our old dog, Joe, really died.