Sometime between 11 pm Thursday (5/7) night and 9:30 am Friday (5/8) morning, our two strictly indoor cats managed to pop one of the screens to the windows in our front office out. Ryan was the first to notice that the cats were missing, and woke me up soon after. We both ran outside to start our search. Within seconds, one of the cats, Bandit, was located in the front yard. I started up our long driveway in my robe and pajamas, frantically calling for the other cat. There is a woman who lives up the road from us that owns several cats, so that was one of the first places I checked. Unfortunately, he wasn't there. I decided to head back to the house to change because I was receiving some unusual looks from the motorists passing me on the road.
By this time, Kiley was awake, so we all head out on foot to look for our missing kitty. Still no luck! He is a very skittish cat, so I was worried he was hunkered down somewhere unfamiliar and too terrified to move. We have a fairly fast moving stream through our backyard, trains rolling by at all hours of the day, and the road our street intersects with is very busy. There are a number of places he could be injured or even killed. Ryan decided to drive the nearby streets to see if there were any black and white causalities. Fortunately, there weren't.
We continued to call for him through out the day to no avail. We placed some food out for him, but there are so many cats in the neighborhood, we'd have no idea if it was him eating it.
Saturday came and went without any sign of him. I was starting to think he was going to end up like his sister who ran away a month before we moved to Roseville. We ended up finding her again, but she was too "wild" we couldn't even get near her to catch her.
So, this morning as I was getting dressed to go out this Mother's Day, Kiley was playing on our bed and Ryan was in the front part of the house. One minute, I'm picking up one of Kiley's rubber duckies off the floor, and the next, I'm staring at Ryan holding Bailey in his arms. Apparently, Ryan thought he heard knocking at the front door, and when he went to investigate, Bailey was strolling down the steps from the lawn. We were relieved and so happy he was home safely. He had sticker burrs in his fur and a little muddy, but otherwise in good condition.
Here's a picture of Ryan and Bailey relaxing on the loveseat in the office several hours after they were reunited:
After Ryan returned from Iraq, Bailey was never the same towards him as he was before. Ryan would struggle just to get Bailey to come near him to pet him. So, when I see this picture, it makes me wonder what he went through for 2 days on his own.
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