Our calico cooncat Teji has been missing since the last week in May. She's now curled up in my lap purring away, feeling quite thin but no obvious signs of abuse. When she disappeared we had papered the town with posters (and refreshed them two weeks ago) and contacted the animal shelters and animal control people. But it wasn't until the last couple of weeks that we began to get a set of calls about a cat resembling her from one neighborhood by the river about a mile away. And today the call was fresh enough so that when I parked the van and tried out my Ethiopian cat call (mother cat call) Teji came howling up the hill out of the bush. She was very happy to see me, even tolerated being picked up and being driven back home in the van.

Once home and inside the kitchen she proceeded to shred the scratching post, and then emptied the dry cat food bowl. Her half sister still hasn't acknowledged her presence with her usual hiss but I'm sure that will happen later.

This is the third time that Teji has disappeared: once for a week, once for a couple of days, and this time for a couple of months. We haven't a clue how she got to where she was, other than imagining her crawling into the back of a parked pickup truck and being driven off.

We'll take her to the vet tomorrow for a formal check-up but we think she's fine and will fatten up fairly quickly to her proper weight.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble