Someone just knocked on my door. It startled me. "Who even knows I'm here?" was the thought that came after "Who could that be?" It was a young lady. She asked me if I had a cat. She told me my cat had just jumped from my second story balcony and ran away.
I was incredulous. "A gray and white cat?!" I asked. She insisted it was so, and insisted on helping me look.
At first glance he appeared to be long gone, and the situation quickly grew more and more bleak. "Is he an outdoor cat?" she asked. I said no. "Is he declawed?" I said yes. I called for him but knew it was futile--Mr. Shapely never comes when called. "I'm leaving tomorrow," I said. "I'm going to be gone for a week." How would I ever find him?
"Well, maybe if you put food out, he'll come back," she said with an optimism I wasn't sharing. And then we saw him in the bushes. I called him and, as always, he sat there as if he didn't hear me. I went after him, and squeezed myself between the building and the bushes. He began his sad, inherently pathetic-sounding croaking noise he calls a meow. "Is he hurt?" my new friend asked. He sure sounded like it, but he seemed to be okay. I picked him up and introduced the two of them, a handsome cat to his cute and sweet savior. I think they liked each other. I took Mr. Shapely home and thanked her for her kindness. I let her know she'd just saved this cat from a terrible fate.
It turned out that this neighbor girl of mine lives in the apartment almost directly across from mine. She, too, lives alone with a cat. Very unusual for us to be living in spacious townhomes alone, but that we both do. I told her perhaps it was fate that she and I met, because now I know a neighbor I would never have known, and Mr. Shapely lives another day.
