Amazing Cat Story

          Yesterday afternoon John went to the post office.  When he came back, he walked into the kitchen with a look of surprise on his face. “Guess what happened to me?” he asked, eyes sparkling.

          “You got a ticket!” I guessed.

          “No!” he said. 

          “You ran over a deer?”

          “No!” He didn’t want me to guess, at all, he wanted to tell me what happened: he drove the truck to the post office, a little over three miles, going 45 mph, the speed limit.  He checked his mail and returned.  He decided to drive up the street to see if the original house he wanted to rent was still available.  As he slowed the truck he heard a cat meowing.  He listened but could not figure out where it was coming from.  He continued to drive home, about 25 mph.  When he pulled into the driveway he heard the meowing again.

          He opened the bed of the truck, but it was empty. More meowing. He got down on his hands and knees and looked under the truck, and there, sitting on a support was Jane! 

          For those of you who don’t know Jane, she was dumped on the side of the road by some neighbors, in October 2001. When John saw this, he came home and told me about it. It just made me sick. A few hours later he came to me and said, “Lets go back and see if that cat is still there.”

          We went back to the spot where the cat had been dumped.  I got out of the car, squatted down, and called “Here kitty!” She came running out of the bushes and jumped into my arms.

          “Now what do I do?” I asked John.

          “Get in the car!” he said. And that’s how she became our cat.

          We told a friend who knew the neighbors and she reported back to us that they had recently found the cat, kept her a few days, then decided they should take her back where they found her.

          But a few weeks later I was giving some neighbor girls a ride home and asked if they wanted to meet Walter, my new doggy, who we had also recently rescued. When the girls saw Jane, they said, “Hi Cooner!”  They knew her as their neighbor’s cat, not a cat that had been recently found.   We figure the reason they dumped her was, (1) they were moving and (2) she does not get along with other cats.   When we moved to Texas John brought her in the U-Haul. She sat on the seat beside him and slept with him in his hotel room at night.  I had hoped that she and Audrey (our other rescue cat, who is as sweet as pie) would get along and both be indoor cats, but Jane ran and charged Audrey, so she lives in the garage and outside, and comes in the house for brief visits, when Audrey is locked up in a bedroom. Recently Jane’s been running off a male cat who pees all over the neighborhood.

          When John told me about Jane’s latest adventure, I rushed outside, got down on my haunches and called.  She jumped down from under the truck and came to me, purring.

          “Check her paws, see if they’re burned.” John said. Her paws were fine. “How did she know to not jump out when I was at the post office? She didn’t start meowing until I was in our neighborhood.”
          “She’s a smart kitty!” I said. I picked her up and kissed her. “Just think, if she had fallen out on the highway we never would have known what had happened to her.”

          “I wonder if she’s ever done this before?” he asked.

          “Who knows!” I said and let her down. She walked into the garage and laid down in a patch of sunlight as if her trip to the post office was no big thing.