I have great new neighbors

I'm still catching up on posts.

A few weeks ago I lost sight of Sam (our cat) long enough that he left the yard. He didn't come home. That night we had a big thunder storm and I was in a complete panic.

The next morning I reported him missing to all of the local shelters and we posted signs. Our neighbors called to let us know that they had seen him in their yard but that he had left in the direction of home (they didn't know we were neighbors yet as they also just moved in). They very kindly promised to keep an eye out for him and grab him if they did see him.

It rained again that night and the water ruined the signs. We replaced them and got our neighbors hopes up that he had been found. I was spending most free moments walking around our subdivision and a few neighboring ones. I even found a lost dog in the process and met more of our neighbors as well as many of the construction workers working in the area. Everyone I met promised to keep an eye out for Sam.

So he went missing on a Monday. By Wednesday I was losing hope. We figured he must have been eaten by a coyote or something up in the tortoise reserve (not far from our house).

Amazingly enough, on Thursday evening I got a call around 9:30pm. A family that lived up the street from us had gone on a hike in the reserve and had seen Sam!

I surprised them a bit by running up the street to meet them at the gate into the reserve from our subdivision and they explained where they had seen him and that they tried to catch him but he kept running away from them. I started to climb up a cliff to where they had indicated and suddenly I was flooded in light. This lovely family and moved their car into an empty lot where they could shine their brights up on the cliff to help me.

I found him in just fifteen minutes hiding in the rocks within ten feet of a young couple (who seemed awfully relieved to discover that the person running toward them with a flashlight wasn't one of their parents). I managed to grab Sam and walk home with him. Sam, of course, was not thrilled to be leaving the reserve. Apparently it is the equivalent of Disneyland for cats. He cried and fussed the whole way home and, to this day, he still bolts for any open door in the house.

It turns out that the family who found Sam had the same thing happen with one of their cats. Their Rocky stayed in the reserve for three months! I am so glad our ordeal lasted less than a week. I don't know what I would have done had Sam walked up to our house after another three months.

So thanks to many of my neighbors, Sam is safe and sound at home and appears to be only slightly grumpy that we won't let him go back to the tortoise reserve.