I'm a volunteer with the nearby Anne Arundel County SPCA. Our SPCA has a “Mobile Adoption Unit”, a customized RV that is outfitted with built-in cages and a veterinary operating room, a gift from a generous donor. Several times a month, SPCA staff and volunteers load up the mobile unit with shelter animals, and visit shopping malls and other events in the county to spend a few hours showing available pets, with the hopes of generating adoption applications.

Early on Saturday morning, April 24th, I and other volunteers were loading up the mobile unit with cats in preparation for an Earth Day event at nearby Quiet Waters Park. “Cuddles”, a gray tabby, needed a little coaxing to go into her cage. She would have none of it. Suddenly she bolted out of my arms and out the door of the mobile unit, which had come open.

I tried to grab her, but she was scared by the barking dogs nearby, and she slipped into the woods surrounding the shelter. A humane trap was set out for her by shelter staff, who told me this happened occasionally. They reassured me she probably would turn up.

The trap managed to capture a few strays, but Cuddles remained missing. Every time I would go over to the shelter on volunteer business, I would ask if Cuddles had come back. The shelter employees were always upbeat and optimistic, but invariably had to give me the news Cuddles was still on the loose. I felt terrible. I have cats of my own, and know all too well the feeling of having one missing. Even though they have returned quickly, I agonize while they're gone.

Tuesday night, June 29th, my doorbell rang. My neighbor, Ramona, wanted to know if this little cat she saw lying on my front step belonged to me. (Neighbors ringing my bell about a wandering cat are nothing new. It’s all part of my job as the neighborhood’s designated “cat lady.”)

I wasn't missing a cat, but I looked at the gray tabby in the fading light. She wasn't one of my SPCA foster cats. But I remembered the little cat that had bolted from the SPCA adoption van two months earlier.

This cat wasn't going to give up her freedom very easily. She took me on a short walking tour of my subdivision before allowing herself to be caught. Once she was in my arms, I got a better look at the red collar around her neck.

There on the plastic collar was a shelter ID number and the name “Cuddles.”

I've heard my share of lost cat stories. You've heard them too: a cat becomes separated from its family who has moved to a new neighborhood. Months later, kitty shows up at the family’s old home, having managed to find it despite a distance of hundreds of miles.

Well, this lost cat story wouldn't be much of a story if Cuddles showed back at the shelter, even several months after she went missing. But I've never heard of a cat managing to track down a person – the person who last held her before she bolted off into the woods. Cuddles had never set eyes on me before the day she got away from me, and had certainly never been to my home, over a mile away from the shelter. And yet here she was at my front door.

I called Christina, the SPCA volunteer coordinator, at home that night and told her the story of Cuddles showing up on my front step. Like me, she could scarcely believe it. We agreed that this kitty would return to the shelter for adoption, but first would be tested for any diseases she may have picked up during her time as a stray. Christina told me she'd come by Wednesday morning to pick up the wanderer.

Cuddles was installed in my bedroom Tuesday evening. I had to keep her separated from my pet cats and fosters and had no other place to put her. By nature, cats will usually hide in unfamiliar surroundings. But instead of hiding under my bed like I had expected, this kitty made herself at home on top of it, doing her yoga stretches, grooming herself and looking for all the world like she belonged right there. I went to bed later that night with a contented and purring Cuddles sharing my pillow.

Cuddles is back at the shelter now. Christina picked her up this morning. She called the shelter director and shelter manager last night to tell them the Amazing Lost Cat Story. For my part, I called the local paper early this morning because I thought it was a cute story and one that, if printed, would perhaps generate some local interest in the shelter.

I know there are people reading this who will point out that I live only a mile away from the shelter and that Cuddles probably showed up at a lot of front doors during her two months of wandering. She was thin when she was found, but not starving. She had almost certainly been fed. But there are hundreds if not a thousand or more homes within a one-mile radius of the shelter -- she showed up at mine. Her collar clearly identified her as a SPCA cat, but nobody who may have seen her returned her to the shelter. Cuddles was wandering for two months and probably crossed the paths of many. But her last stop was at the house of the person who lost her. Any skeptic could find a way to discount the facts and dismiss the story. But I'm inclined to focus on the mystery and the magic of this lost cat tale, as cat lovers are wont to do. The only one who knows the real story of this Amazing Lost Cat isn't saying much.

Copyright © Robin Merica
July 1, 2004

Read Robin's other stories: Patrick the Terror, now Happy & A lost cat story with a happy ending