Read This Long Story About My Cat, or, If You’re Heartless, Just Skip to Current Bethsack! Rankings

Thee catt.

So, here is the story with the cat. This is Buddy.

We inherited him when Brad’s dad died in July 2008.

Bradley has some really serious allergies, including one to cat dander. All he has to do is walk in the front door of a house with a cat, and his eyes swell, he starts getting all snotty and sniffly, … It’s very attractive.

For whatever inexplicable reason, he has zero allergic reaction to Buddy.

We love this cat. LOVE. And there are a lot of reasons for this. There are sentimental reasons tied to Brad’s dad. There are the reasons related to our love of cats but inability to really have them as pets – except for Buddy. There are the this-cat-is-so-weird-and-acts-like-a-dog reasons. There are the reasons tied to Buddy’s EXTREME affection for Brad. (Buddy sat on the bed where Bob died, clearly mourning, the entire week we were there taking care of everything surrounding Bob’s death. As soon as we got him home with us, this absolute devotion seemed to just shift directly to Bradley.)

Buddy’s a 14-year-old indoor cat. But he’s not a prissy, slink-around-on-my-belly-when-I-get-outside scaredy cat. He’s been around the block a couple times (har). We don’t let him out, but when we’re coming in the door with four children, two backpacks, three lunch sacks, a bag of bottles, a blankie bear, a couple pairs of shoes and socks that have been discarded on the ride home, sometimes coats, usually an art project or two of Anneke’s, our coffee mugs from the morning, my bag, the mail, and whatever stuff has been sent home from schools that day, it happens, ON OCCASION, that the door is left AJAR for possibly two minutes.

Well. The Saturday morning before last, the 20th, Brad noticed that Buddy hadn’t slept with us the night before (he usually sleeps on Brad’s chest or in between us in our bed). We quickly realized we didn’t remember seeing him AT ALL since the morning before, when Brad had given him the what-for about drinking out of the toilet in our bathroom.

We scoured the house: no Buddy. Brad checked the washer and dryer (scary): no Buddy. We checked the garage: no Buddy.

All we can figure is that he must have gotten out Friday when someone came in the front door. He wouldn’t have tried to make a break for it or anything, but if we didn’t notice he was out there, we would’ve shut him out without realizing.

So. Brad canvased the neighborhood, and I posted a message to the neighborhood forum (I freakin’ LOVE our neighborhood) that included photos. Then, over the course of TEN DAYS, we posted another message to the forum, put up flyers on all the mailboxes, checked the animal shelter, posted an ad on craigslist, left a can of his food out on the porch for three nights, and looked for him everywhere we went. No Buddy. (In the meantime, it SNOWED for an entire day in Austin. (It does not snow in Austin.) All I could think of was Buddy’s little Buddy body decaying somewhere in the snow. Because I am an optimist.)

Anyway. Another cat in our neighborhood had gone missing around the same time, and that thread on the neighborhood forum had gotten a lot more attention. I noticed that there were several messages about kitty sightings that were NOT this other cat but that could very well have been Buddy. On Day 10, I posted a message to that thread with photos and said we’d pretty much given up hope, but asked if any of the strays resembled our kitty.

I got a direct message within minutes. A woman had been walking her dog at 6 o’clock that morning and had seen a cat that looked “lost” that resembled the cat in the photos I’d posted. She didn’t think he belonged to the house where she saw him, but said she couldn’t approach him because of her dog. She told us she’d seen him at a two-story yellow house at a specific intersection on the other side of our block. I forwarded the message to Brad, who was already leaving work early to check one other lead we’d gotten from the message board.

So. TEN HOURS after the possible Buddy sighting from the woman walking her dog, Brad drives by the house, and there he is. Just sitting there. On the complete opposite side of our block, but only about 10-12 houses away if you walked the perimeter.

He was dirty, and he was PISSED OFF, but other than that, totally normal. Brad got him inside, and he immediately started this meow-yelling thing he does when we leave him alone for an extended period of time, like when we go to Dallas for the holidays. Then, he ate a lot, used his litter box, and pretty much went straight to his favorite spot sitting with us on the couch.

Little kitty WEIRDO.

And now, we have come to the end of my ANNOYINGLY LONG AND DETAILED STORY about recent feline-related activities at House of Beths.

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Current Bethsack! Rankings

• Whimsy – 17
• Shanna – 15
• Jayme – 13
• Patrick – 9
• Kristy and Bradley – 8
• Carolee – 3
• Chelsea, Christine, and Robyn – 2
• Aunt Becky and Jo – 1

In addition, there are three anonymous formspring questions — involving habits, hamburgers, and evaporated milk — that I don’t have associated with anyone. Email me at the address below if one or more of those are yours!

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