Back in the days before letting a cat go outside became politically incorrect, our cat was stolen from us by a neighbor. We lived on a military base, and cats usually only had to contend with the coyotes. Our 5-month old kitten had adopted a full-grown male who had been living rough for some time, and they were inseperable…he followed her around like a dog. She was wearing a collar, so she could not be mistaken for one of the strays, but our across the street neighbors took her. At the time, my dad had just died, and this second loss was devastating to me. I went around to all the neighbors asking if they had seen her, but didn’t go to this house because they never seemed to be home.
After a week or two, we noticed that the male cat (our beloved Moose) had taken to spending all day sitting on this family’s front porch, only coming home at night. But we didn’t begin to be suspicious until about a moth later, when my husband saw the daughter in the family outside holding a black kitten that looked like our Muffin. He went over to talk to her, and she immediately ran inside with the kitten. He knocked, and talked to the grandmother, who got very defensive and said they’d had that cat for months. Now we were convinced they had our cat, but the MP’s told us there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
This family didn’t socialize with any of the neighbors…we were a very friendly and social group of young families, and they were unusual in that they never, ever came out to talk, or stopped to visit while doing yardwork. And still Moose sat on their porch, sometimes in front of their basement windows, every single day. Soon everyone in the area knew that we suspected Muffin was in their house, and everyone was watching for her to be let out.
Then about four months later, a neighbor called to say that she thought Muffin was outside under her camper. The kids in the suspected family had all gone away for the summer, and the parents must have let her out. She was pregnant, and not very friendly, and wouldn’t come to me. She ran off, with Moose in pursuit, and we couldn’t find her again. Two nights later was our wedding anniversary, and when we came back from dinner, there was a note on our door from a neighbor asking us to stop by when we got home, because they had an anniversary surprise for us. When we went to their door, they handed us a squirming bed sheet and told us to “take it home quick, before they see you!” Wrapped up in the sheet was Muffin, and she was not happy! She had grown so much, and was so pregnant, that we weren’t sure at first if it was really her. But as soon as we let her out of the sheet, she stalked over to the quilt I had set up on a frame, and jumped right up and settled in to the spot she used to sleep in months before. And Moose came in the door a few minutes later, sniffed her over and settled in to sleep under the frame. He never again went over to the suspect family’s front porch. Never.
They didn’t start looking for her until their kids came back a few weeks later. They probably thought she had run off to have her kittens. We never let her outside again, but she would sit in the bedroom window that faced their house, and one day they saw her there. The friend that had stolen her back for us called me to share that the father had come to her door and asked if we had always had two black cats, and she said “Yes, Moose and Muffin!” In fact, we heard from several other neighbors about the father asking the same question, and of course all the neighbors, who had been in on the story, reassured him that we’d always had two cats! Apparently the kids, who had stolen her in the first place, fussed when they saw her in our window, but had never told their step-father the truth about where they had gotten the kitten. The grandmother knew, since she had given my husband a story about having brought the cat back from Ohio.
Muffin was so ill-tempered and unfriendly that we decided that, after she had the kittens, we would return her to the people who had stolen her, and just keep a kitten. They had kept her locked in a basement with another cat and two German Shepherds, and we feared she was permanently changed by the experience. But as soon as the kittens were born, she returned to her loving, gentle, sweet self. She was an excellent mom, and had a long and happy life with us. Moose remained devoted to her until the day he died, and once she even let his tail touch hers…we took a picture, it was so momentous!
I hope you recover your dear cat…one of my current cats is a Chloe, too! Don’t give up hope!
