After a few hours sleep, I wake up at 7am, leaving my husband in bed and decide to resume the search. I feed Milly, and let her outside and I stand in the garden fruitlessly calling Jason. Milly is in top form, running around the garden sniffing everything, chasing ripples in the grass and returning affectionately to me to have her face rubbed. She doesn't seem to be missing her brother at all, the little rascal!
After tea and toast, I begin the first of many searches that day. Retracing my steps from last night along the alleys and streets near my house. It is like looking for a needle in a haystack as he could be anywhere but this doesn't deter me. I even go back and get my car so I can go a bit further afield. I drive slowly along scanning the roads and pavements for him, but after a near miss with another car, I decide that this is a bad idea and ditch the car.
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| I'm just a big softy |
As the morning goes on, the feeling continues to grow in me that there will be a big hole in my life if Jason never comes back. I didn’t realise how much I would miss his brash bolshy presence; he was also affectionate and incredibly amusing. There is no cat out there quite like Jason and I pictured my life over the next 14 years or so without him in it and it seemed incredibly grey and dull.
As I walk the streets that day, I hope he’ll appear around every corner meowing loudly as he always does, but he doesn't. Later my husband gets up and helps me search. We search together and we then search separately. I knock on peoples’ doors and ask them to look out for him and to check sheds and garages. I even walk around our local park, breaking into a run when I see a ginger shape at the other end. But its just someones dog. My eyes are gritty from lack of sleep and I ache with tiredness but still I keep on relentlessly pounding the streets in the hope of seeing him.
Everytime I go back to my house, Milly looks as smug as can be and is more affectionate than usual, constantly trying to get on my lap. I think she would definitely adjust well to being the only cat in our house! However I’m determined not to let that happen. Later my husband has to go back to work and I continue to search. I spend most of the day walking the streets trying to find him, it becomes addictive, if I just go that bit further and look around the next corner he might be there. I’m so worried, I can barely eat. Its that extreme kind of worrying that takes complete hold of you and stops you enjoying anything else that might be going on - like a tight band around your insides. The worry and the guilt eats away inside you until you can’t think about anything else.
At about 7pm, I am on a break from searching and one of my neighbours calls round. She is a cat person, with 3 cats herself - one of them being Jason’s adversary Caspar! She has come round to offer her support and help me look for Jason. If I hadn't been so worried, I think would have burst into tears.
Even though I’m beginning to realise that the searching is pretty pointless, the sense of companionship compels me to accept her offer. Its nice to know that there are other cat people out there and I’m not a complete raving lunatic.
We head off and she tells me stories of the scrapes her cats have got into over the years, that they have always returned from. She also shows me lots of places around the estate I didn't know existed, secret paths behind houses, hidden green areas with trees and a small electricity sub-station which has high brick walls. My neighbour is quite a forceful person and she insists on knocking on the door of the house next to the sub-station and asking them to look out of their upstairs window to see if Jason was trapped inside. I admire her bravery on behalf of my cat.
Her teenage son even helps us for a while and we all wander round shouting for Jason. After about an hour and a half we call it a day and I thank her for giving up her time to help me look for him.
I go back wearily into my house to make missing cat posters using my computer. I decide that I will need to contact my work in the morning and take the morning off as holiday to distribute flyers and pin posters to trees. Milly constantly wants attention - its like having a completely different cat, like she has taken on some of Jason’s attention seeking personality. Eventually I put her downstairs and close the door so I can miserably look through suitable pictures of Jason in peace.
I feel depressed at the thought that after almost 24 hours, he was still missing. There was definitely something wrong, something that couldn't be explained away by him being a young male cat out on the tiles.
I hear some thumps from downstairs, Milly is in a playful frame of mind and is known to scamper about the place very fast when this mood takes her. Then I hear a louder noise from down there and I run down to investigate. In the kitchen, there stands Jason! I grab him and hug him tightly telling him how much I love him and how glad I am he’s come back.
I am so grateful he has come home and relieved I haven't lost him for good. This time I do shed a tear as I sit on the floor cuddling him fiercely. He starts to struggle so I let him go and I text my husband HE’S BACK! He immediately rings me, sounding incredibly pleased. While he doesn't freak out as easily as me, he was very worried about his own favourite!
When he gets home, we both make a fuss of Jason, which he absolutely loves. I now realise just how much I love both my cats. Some cats are easy to love, others just chip away at you by sheer force of personality until you can’t imagine your life without them in it. A year later and neither of them have stayed out all night like that again. The most logical explanation could be that he was trapped in someone's shed or garage for 24 hours, as he was very hungry when he came back.
Unfortunately I know that if anything like this does happen again, I will probably react exactly the same way as before and worry, but that’s my problem and those two cats bring me such fun and laughter that it will always be worth it.
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