Missing over a month: A lost and found miracle story

March 29, 2017     By Mark D. Swartz

In 2013 I had a mystical experience involving one of my outside feral cats. This tawny brown feral cat was born along with several others outside my house in May of 2011. When she was a few months old I took her to have her spayed and get vaccinations. Since I was then caring for so many feral cats and kittens I gave away about six of my young kittens including Tawny to an animal rescue group that adopts them out — they have a table at various Virginia Petsmart stores on Saturdays.

They adopted out all of the kittens except this tawny colored one. Some kittens don’t get along well with people and this one was not very friendly so a few days later the rescue group returned her to me as being “unadoptable.”

Tawny eventually got used to me and sometimes would come into my house but she preferred to stay outside and didn’t like it if I showed her too much affection. In November of 2013 a few of my outside cats caught respiratory infections where they would sneeze and have runny eyes. This is usually due to a virus and there is no medical treatment that can be given. Near the end of November Tawny developed a watery eye and stopped eating and would sleep all day.

On November 30th 2013 Tawny simply disappeared and after over a month had passed she still had not returned. I assumed that she either died or moved on to another area. I e-mailed my county animal shelter, they did not have her and I was heartbroken realizing that I would never see her again.

In early December my next door neighbors house was foreclosed and the family began moving out. A real estate company started clearing out the house a few weeks later. Weeks later in January 2014 I saw and heard a small cat meowing to me in the window of the next door house’s basement garage — the cat was meowing as if saying “please let me out.” The real estate agent let me go into the house but when I did so I could not find this cat. I soon determined that it was hiding behind an electrical closet of a basement room and would not come out.

I quickly put food and water outside that closet and found that this frightened cat would eat the food but afterwards go back into the closet and hide. A friend of mine with the cat rescue group Dewey Animals loaned me a Havahart trap. The first time that I used it I saw that the food was eaten but the trap door didn’t close. I tried again and put new food in the trap on a Saturday night. The next morning I went into the house and was overjoyed to discover that this mystery cat was finally trapped.

The cat that I’d trapped looked very much like my missing cat but I didn’t at first recognize her because she was so thin. I carried her home in the trap and compared her face markings with photos that I had taken of my missing tawny cat and then realized that it was her. I don’t know if she had any food or water during the time she was missing but she was still healthy.

A full year plus has passed since Tawny’s big adventure and she’s fully recovered. Tawny now spends 85% of the time indoors with me but I gladly let her out whenever she likes and trust her not to repeat her prior “bad girl” performance.

What’s really strange and miraculous is that sometimes when you’ve given up all hope something unexpected unfolds that grants your wish. What I learned from Tawny is that there’s no such thing as an “unadoptable” pet.

Photos: Mark D. Swartz


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2 thoughts on “Missing over a month: A lost and found miracle story”

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