The Cat Came Back

As of lately our cats have had a bit of a history of escaping. I'll start with Penny, who, last summer, snuck out our window through a tiny little spot in our screen that wasn't quite shut all the way. We printed out flyers, searched the neighborhood, the river, the swamp area, parking lots, and the used car lot (that's a lot of cars to look under!). We were terrified for our little baby kitten and it was not a happy time in the Lewis house. Our apartment was in the basement with our windows opening up to the ground, so we slept with the windows open and cat food all over, hoping that she would make her way back in. After not sleeping so well that night due to listening for Penny and also because we were a little nervous that our windows were all wide open (did I mention that we our windows looked out into the parking lot so everyone could watch us sleep?), we decided to just leave the window cracked so she could get in the same way she got out. And guess what? She did. Two nights later, 3am, she was at the end of our bed, meowing at us, announcing her arrival home. Since then she has been absolutely terrified of leaving the house and panics every time we take her near the door. This makes me SO happy :)

Sunny's story is pretty ridiculous. I was at work and I got a text from Chad that he couldn't find Sunny. He had looked all over the house and had no luck. Now it's important to note that Penny had a funny habit of opening all of the cupboard doors in the morning. I would wake up for work and find ALL of the bottom cupboard doors open! So I would shut all of them and then she would open them all up again before Chad would get up. Okay, so this was the same time that we were packing all of our things up to move in with my parents. The night before we had packed up all of our things under our bathroom sink, exposing a giant, gross, dirty hole in the wall where the plumbing went. Awesome apartments. Chad suddenly put two and two together and figured Sunny had probably climbed in the hole and was now in the wall! BAH! We felt like we were in Sunny in Philadelphia with our cat in the wall! Chad put out some tuna fish hoping that would lure him back in, no such luck. Finally after calling the maintenance guys and getting the okay to make the gross hole a little bigger he was able to look in the wall. And as he looked into the wall he saw... cleaning supplies. Our NEIGHBORS cleaning supplies under HIS sink. The hole went into our neighbors apartment!!! COME ON!!! Are you serious? That's literally what Chad said to me on the phone as we were talking as I was driving home. "I've got to go, I've just got to go, I've got to figure this out!" and then hung up. Chad ran over to the neighbors apartment. "So... funny question.... did you happen to see any random, stray cats in your apartment today?" Our neighbor was getting out of his shower that morning and as he got out Sunny was just chillin' in his bathroom. Scared the pants of him. He said he didn't know what to do with the cat so he.... let it go. What? Yup, he let him go. Who just lets a cat go? Our awesome neighbor, that's who. So we started our search. Keep in mind though that this isn't just any cat. Chad has had Sunny for 12 years. Almost 13 years. He literally rescued Sunny from his burning house. We HAD to find Sunny! The river, the parking lots, the swamp, everywhere. And guess what? I FOUND HIM! I found him fenced in with the electrical power lines. I called to him and he... ignored me. Wouldn't even look at me. Just kept meowing and crying and ignoring me. Awesome, love you too Sunny. Chad came running over and Sunny took one look at him and leaped into his arms. It's was very cute.

Unlike Penny though, Sunny has been trying to escape ever since. He's succeeded multiple times but we catch him pretty quick. He had quite the run when we were moving to the Parents house and then moving again to Utah. But he never made it too far.... until Thursday night.

We had just decided to go to bed when Chad realized we hadn't seen Sunny in a while. Well crap. We searched the whole house. I was hoping that we had accidentally locked him in the closet or bathroom like we had done to Penny but we weren't that lucky. We ripped the house apart before finally accepting the fact that he had managed to escape. So at 12 we both ran outside and searched all over the apartment grounds. Under all the bushes and tress, around the pool, and under all the cars. No Sunny. We finally had to give up and call it a night. We searched again all morning, hoping we'd have more luck in the daylight, but no. We drove around, rode our bikes looking for him and searched everywhere again and again. No Sunny. That night we left a bunch of food out everywhere for him, just like the last night, and left the door to our patio open. Around 8pm Chad looked out the back door, and there he was! Just sitting and looking at the backdoor, waiting patiently to be let in. So after all the effort on our part all we really needed to do was wait. He eventually got hungry and cold enough and decided to come on home.

Hopefully we won't have any more escape stories to add to our list! What about you? Any funny stories about missing pets? Hopefully ones with happy endings!