The Greatest Reunion

I'll initiate this post by revealing that 18 days ago, on September 1, my beloved cat Esme left my house in Katy to do some exploring. Generally she stays out for a few hours and then comes back home, but this time she didn't. My mom didn't tell me this because she didn't want to get me worked up for no reason, in case Esme came back home some time in the night. (As I said in my previous post, I am now living in an apartment downtown so I wasn't home when Esme was let out.) However, when I arrived at my mom's house two days later, I noticed two distinct problems: first, the garage door was not propped open as per the usual, which allows Esme to go in and out of the house, second, Esme did not run up to greet me when I got out of my car as she always does. I called my mom to inquire about Esme, and she told me that she hadn't come home since Wednesday morning.

Of course a thousand terrible thoughts filled my head as to what could have become of my little girl, so I drove around the neighborhood looking for her (or, heaven forbid, her body) and came up empty. I continued looking for her and asking my neighbors, but nobody saw her and she was certainly not roaming around. At that point I had to content myself with the idea that someone would find her and call me, seeing as she had a collar with my name and number on it. Though the days, and weeks, passed I refused to accept that my Esme was really gone, and, as it turns out, with good reason!

On Friday night, September 17, I was sitting in the gameroom at my mom's house in Katy when I got a phone call from my best friend Kristy. In the course of our conversation she asked me if I had found Esme yet, to which I reluctantly answered "no." Just then my phone beeped that I had a call on the other line. It was a number that I didn't recognize, so I let it go to voicemail. When I got off the phone with Kristy I saw that the mystery caller left a message, so I checked it. A male voice that I didn't recognize said that he had found my cat and left a number for me to call back. I jumped out of my chair and started yelling, "he found my kitty!" My mom and her friend Michelle looked at me like I was crazy until they realized what I was saying. I called the man back and he told me that he had Esme and he could hold her for me until I could come get her. Then came the truly miraculous part, he had found her in his neighborhood in Sugarland, TX. That's a 30 minute drive from my mom's house, how could Esme possibly have made it that far?!

My mom and I immediately hopped in the car to make the drive to Sugarland, and the entire way we kept marveling at how Esme could have made that entire trip on foot. When we picked her up she looked clean, healthy and had a mysterious flea collar on her which I know I hadn't put on her before she left. So, my mom and I came to this conclusion: someone found her, took her in to their home (presumably in Sugarland) and she either got out, or was let out, and she attempted to make her way back home. I'm just glad she managed to run into a very lovely couple who were more than happy to help reunite a lost kitty with her family.

The next day my mom and I took Esme into the vet to get her some Capstar in case she had gotten fleas during her journey, and while we were at Petsmart I just couldn't help myself, I had to buy her a new, clean collar and a nice pink sweater to match.

She's not a fan of the sweater, but she's just so adorbs!

I took the sweater off of her right after this picture, but I just had to take at least one. I'm just happy that my little girl is back home safe where she belongs, and I'll definitely be getting a microchip put in her soon. I can't risk losing my Esme again!