Cousin Tom Cat’s Adventure

Hi all, this is Foster, reporting from my new lookout! And guess what! I found out that I have two cousins, Maggie and Tom Cat. Maggie is cute and all, but this post is going to be primarily about Tom Cat and his scary adventure.

I’m told Tom Cat had a bit of a hard life before he got adopted by Mom’s sister and her husband. He actually started hanging around their house for a long time and finally they just let him live there and took him to the vet for his…well, operation. That was about four years ago, and he has been happy there ever since.

He likes playing with Maggie, even though she is still really a kitten. And he likes lying around and looking cute just like I do!

It seems Maggie and I have a few things in common, too.

Tom Cat and Maggie have a pretty fun backyard, too. (Don’t know how they did it, but they convinced their parents to let them play outside.) Mom thought this picture looks like they are pretending to be pandas hiding in bamboo. Speaking of pandas, I think Mom’s sister could be one of those crazy cat ladies if given the chance. But you can only have so many cats, so she has to be content with being a crazy panda lady instead. Seriously she has a huge collection of pandas! And this isn’t even all of them!

I was thinking how much fun it would be to have that many pandas to play with, but I have to admit that really big one looks a little scary! Maggie says she’s not allowed in the “Panda Room” though. Well, that’s probably a good thing, because since she is black and white, what if she got mixed up with all the pandas and they closed the door and then she was missing for days and no one knew where she was? (Uh-oh, I’m starting to sound like Mom now!) But that brings me to Tom Cat’s adventure.

Awhile back, Tom Cat was outside enjoying his back yard like he does every day. But this day was to be different. Unbeknownst to him, he was on the brink of a huge adventure. With a quick jump, he climbed over the back fence and then…

I was going about my everyday business – playing and overall just looking cute, when Mom got a text from her sister that Tom Cat was missing! We both felt bad about it but Mom texted back that he would probably come back because that’s what cats usually do.

So Mom and her sister were texting back and forth for about a week, with Mom trying to convince her sister that Tom Cat would come back. She reminded her of stories about cats who had gotten inside moving trucks and ended up across the country but came back. She related the story of how Scamper (before my time) was missing for three weeks and came back. But days went by, and still no Tom Cat. They had just about decided he’d gone with the people down the street who moved out on the same day he went missing.

Maggie was lonely without Tom Cat. She waited patiently by the window for him to come back. Then finally Mom got the text saying Tom Cat had been found! Maggie and their dad had been out by the back fence watering the flowerbed when they heard meowing. It sounded like it was coming from the shed in the neighbor’s back yard! They thought later that Tom Cat must have heard Maggie and their dad talking (well, Maggie would have been meowing) and that he had recognized their voices and began calling for help.Their dad went around the block and knocked on the people’s door, explaining that he thought his cat was in their shed. They went in the backyard and opened the shed, and, lo and behold, there was Tom Cat, looking scared, hungry and thirsty! He was too scared to come out so his dad had to go in and get him. He looked like he had lost weight, too. (I guess it was a good thing he was a little “chunky” to begin with!) Maggie was so happy to see him that she immediately wanted to play, but after having a snack and drinking lots of water, Tom Cat was only in the mood for a nap!