CeeCee Still Lost

CeeCee was lost on September 13th and is still lost. I had been going to the animal shelters looking for her and walking the neighborhood. I had driven through many other neighborhoods looking for her. Her picture is on Facebook and on many other Web sites that try to help people find lost animals. There are so many animals lost it made me sad.

One day I went walking on my street and carried binoculars and was looking in the tall trees that line our streets. I looked in people's yards using the binoculars. I looked under bushes. Then one of my neighbors drove into her driveway and I showed her a photo of CeeCee. She said that there was a cat that looked like her living under the house next to hers. She said the people who lived in the house had gone off and left the cat there. I went to the house next door and sure enough there was a cat who came to greet me. It wasn't CeeCee. This cat meowed at me and turned around and walked a little ways and then turned and meowed again. It repeated this over and over and I thought it might want me to follow it, so I followed the little thing behind the house. The cat went under the house through an opening that's used by plumbers. It turned around in the opening and hissed at me. I wondered if it was trying to protect my cat who might have been injured and hiding under the house. I called for CeeCee many times but never heard anything. When this cat left the opening I looked under the house but saw nothing.

A lady across the street who is in her 90s came to talk to me. She told me that the cat had been abandoned. She had been feeding it dog food from her dog. She gave it water and food each day. She said she wanted to take the cat but couldn't because of her dog. She said she wished that someone would give it a home. I felt sorry for the cat but wanted my own cat to return.

Another lady who lives beside the elderly lady told me she had been feeding the cat too. She wanted to give it a home but her husband wouldn't allow it. They had a dog too. In fact, I had found their dog once when it was lost. I put a sign in my yard saying, "Found Dog" and my phone number. That same day I got a call from this man and he described his dog. Sure enough it was his dog.

I went home and when my husband came from work I told him about the abandoned cat down the street. He wanted to go see if CeeCee was under the house. We walked to the abandoned house with the abandoned cat but we didn't find our CeeCee. My husband had pity on the cat that was there and went back home and got CeeCee's food to feed her. She ate like she was starved. She finished the can of food faster than CeeCee ever did. From that day on we took the abandoned cat a can of cat food and fresh water. We washed the dishes she ate out of too. Each time we would go feed this abandoned cat she would eat like she was starved. While she ate we sat down on a wooden bench that was built on the porch. After she ate she would climb onto our laps and let us pet her. She would curl up in our laps with her front paws tucked under her.

My sister-in-law had given me a book about cat language and I remembered that when a cat tucks it's paws under it that meant it felt safe. It started to get cold out side so we took blankets for the cat to sleep on. I would take it a fresh blanket each day when we went to feed the cat. This little creature was frightened of every sound. It would jump at everything. I and my husband thought that we should take this little thing home with us. We tried to carry it to our house but the cars driving by frightened it and it ran back to it's abandoned house.

Not long after that it rained for two days. When we could get back to fed the cat again we went into the garage where we had put the blankets on the floor for it to sleep on. The blankets were wet. I got clean blankets and a plastic lid to put them on so they wouldn't get wet again. We started home again and this time the cat followed us home. She was afraid of the door when we opened it for her to come in the house. She ran back to her abandoned house. I decided to go for a walk for exercise and I passed by the abandoned house where she was and she saw me and followed me home. My husband and I sat on our front porch and petted the cat for a long time. She was nervous and ran back home to her familiar abandoned house. This went on for several days until finally my husband picked up the cat and took her inside our house.

Things have gone nicely and we now have a new pet. We need to take her to see if she is pregnant. She needs her shots too. We have been going slowly with her so she can gain confidence that she will be okay living with us. Today she went out the door to be outside for a while. I had to go to the store for meat for our dinner and left her outside. When I came home my husband was back from work and I asked him where she was. He pointed to a place close to where he was working outside. I took the food inside the house and eventually the cat came to the door and wanted inside. I opened the door and she came inside. This sounds simple enough for any cat to do but she was terrified of doors. I think the door on the garage where she had been staying had hit her at some time and it probably slammed open and shut and caused her to be very protective with doors.

I named the new cat after CeeCee. Because she is the second cat we've had I tried to combine CeeCee with the word two. Two CeeCee, TwoCeeCee, TwoCee, TootCee. I remembered the movie I liked named "Tootsie". Her new name is TootCee.

TootCee has a nice soft bed of small blankets I bought for my mother when she was alive. They are very soft and fluffy. I put two cat beds under the blanket and she sinks down into the softness and doesn't move. So far she is such a good cat. We have a bird and I have to be careful but so far things are going well.

We bathed TootCee two days ago and she didn't care much for it. She lived and she is nice and clean now. I took several pictures of her after her bath.