Cats can appear at the most inconvenient times. My house has always been a magnet for stray cats.

As I was packing my truck to leave on a camping trip, this beautiful gray and white cat kept coming up to me, asking to be petted. She was well-fed, and looked to be in excellent health, but I still worried about whether she had a home. I hadn't seen her before in the neighborhood, but the weather was beautiful, and I thought it best to leave her outside and maybe she'd find her way home.

I looked for the gray and white cat when I got home, but didn't see her again for several months. Then around August, she started hanging out on the side of my house with a group of other young cats from the neighborhood. Every time I came out of the house, or into the back yard, they'd all skedaddle like they'd been caught smoking behind the barn. As fall came and the weather grew colder, she hung back a bit when all the other cats left. Pretty soon she was willing to come in the house and eat.

As I do every time a stray shows up, I put up posters all over the neighborhood, but nobody called to claim the cat. I had named her Gracie, as in graceful. When she was living outside, she had a habit of running up the trees in my back yard and then running right back down again by herself. I've never seen another cat do that.

Gracie had been living with me for almost a year when I saw the poster -- "Lost Small Gray and White Cat." There were tear-off tabs with a phone number. I was on my way to the gym, so I took a tab and stuffed it in my bag, and went on.

I knew that I had to call that phone number, but I had come to love her and I just didn't want to give her up. For a couple of weeks I agonized, then decided I had to call. After all, if it had been my cat, I would have wanted to know she was OK. So, I searched my gym bag for the number. I couldn't find it! I searched a few more times over the next week, but with no luck. I rationalized that Gracie was meant to be my cat.

Several more months went by, and as I reached into an inner pocket of my gym bag for something, I pulled out that slip of paper with the phone number. Now, I had to call!

When I did, I heard an amazing story. Gracie, this robust, healthy, beautiful cat, had been thrown out of a station wagon at a stable that her owner's roommate frequented. The car took off and was never seen again. At that time, Gracie was a tiny kitten, and very sick. The roommate took her home and gave her medication for weeks -- never sure she would survive. They named her China, because she was so delicate.

Apparently, China slipped out an open door one day and was gone. They saw her once more -- peering into the screen door -- but by the time they got to the door and unlocked it, she was gone. They hadn't seen or heard about her since.

The woman I talked with asked if I wanted to keep China -- they had taken in too many cats (that sounded familiar), and in fact had just taken some of them to a friend who had a small farm. All she asked was that she be allowed to come over and see China, now Gracie, one more time. Of course I said yes.

When Gracie's former "Mom" came over, she looked at Gracie, then past her to my other cats, and asked where China was. She hadn't recognized her because Gracie had grown from a scrawny, sickly kitten into a healthy, beautiful cat. We figured she must have had at least one more home between our two, because she was already healthy when she got to me. She certainly had a long, interesting journey on the way to her permanent home.

Copyright © Jo Baer
April 10, 2002

Read Jo's other story: Perilous Journey