Pebbles is not an outside cat. She stays in the house. Sometimes on a summer evening we coax her out of the house and she roams around the backyard. If she hears a loud or strange noise though she makes a beeline back into the house. She seems to enjoy roaming around but doesn’t seem to be too crazy about the grass on her feet. This leads us to the Pebbles disappearance story. After spending time in the backyard for a few nights she started trying to get out when we let the dogs out. Oh, did I tell you she liked to hide in the attic and drive us crazy trying to find her? So now you have the background to the disappearance story. We get up in the morning and after a few hours notice Pebbles isn’t around. We look everywhere, including the attic. Pebbles is gone! Where could she be? I walk the neighborhood calling her name and looking in every nook and cranny I can find…still, no Pebbles. Now I’m beyond worry, I’m frantic. Pebbles is really gone. We figure she snuck out when we let the dogs out the night before. I try to remain calm and start making up posters to put around the neighborhood figuring she somehow wandered off but can’t be too far. After a week, and I don’t know how many tears, I take out an ad in the local newspaper. At the end of week two everyone tells me, it’s too bad but you’ll never see that cat again, she’s either in a ditch or someone else’s house. I refuse to believe that Pebbles is gone for good. I continue to walk around looking for her and uping the reward on our posters. Not only is she gone but it’s a rainy cold time so even if she is out there, I’m told, being a housecat she’ll get sick and won’t make it. Not too much encouragement from my family and friends. I don’t care, she’s got to be somewhere and I won’t believe she’s dead, I can’t even say the word. FIVE WEEKS and no Pebbles. At the end of the fifth week the phone rings. “I don’t think this is your cat, but I found a cat if you want to come and take a look,” the lady on the phone said. She told me where she lived – five minutes away from where we live by car. My husband said not to get excited, especially since the lady said she didn’t think it was our cat. We drove to the lady’s house and she was right, it wasn’t our cat. She tried to get us to take this cat, a kitten really, but I was crestfallen and just wanted my Pebbles. We returned home and continued to wait. Two days later the same lady calls, “you’re not going to believe this but I think this time we have your cat.” Now I’m excited. Again, my husband says don’t get your hopes up, you know what happened the last time.

I have to admit that was the longest five minute ride I ever took. When we got to the house the lady brought us around to her backyard. There, under a fish net, was PEBBLES! The lady said no one could get near her so they threw the fish net over her to keep her there. I untangled her from the net and picked her up. She just laid in my arms and the lady said, “well we know she’s your cat that’s for sure.” I began to cry and just held her in my arms. She was very dirty and skinny but she was found! Apparently she had been living under a shed in the lady’s backyard for the past five weeks. A neighbor had seen her run across the yard a few times but didn’t give it a second thought. As soon as we got her home I called the vet and we took her in for a checkup. She had lost weight, had fleas and parasites and her blood wasn’t too good either. We didn’t get her hair cut just yet because of the additional trauma it would have caused. He gave us medicine for her and said to feed her soft food for a couple of weeks to help build her strength. (She had been eating Iams dry cat food since birth.) We immediately bought cans of food and gave her a little each day. At the end of two weeks we returned to the vet. She had improved tremendously and all the varmints living on or in her body were gone. We got her hair cut and had her bathed to clean her up again. By the end of three weeks she was not only our normal, healthy Pebbles, but she was a miracle cat. A house cat who had survived being in the great outdoors by herself for five weeks! There was no way to tell of the ordeal she had gone through except for a black stripe down her back. Her hair had always been light gray all over but now she had a thin black stripe down the middle of her back. Our Pebbles was back and all was well.