Lord, have mercy on a little cat

Yes, that is a prayer.

Little Girl, our half-tail, clipped right ear, brown tabby outdoor cat, has disappeared. We circle the neighborhood, we knock on doors, I've called the vets and animal control. It's as if she has disappeared into the ether.

Over two years ago she moved from her birth-yard to mine. She was old enough to be in heat and was the victim (willing or not) of every male cat in the neighborhood. She never got with kitten, which I saw as a good thing, and since I knew where she had been born, I asked permission of her birth "mother" to trap her and get her spayed. It took a two month campaign of good food, fresh water, and patience to get her from living under the trailer in the side yard to coming into the back yard. I had her trapped on canned cat food less than a minute after I closed the back door and went inside.

I felt so sorry for the tiny thing. I took her to the vet, had her spayed and given proper vaccinations. They suggested clipping her right ear in case she ran away from me. I gathered it was the code used here for stray cats: "I am spayed/neutered and just looking for a meal. Leave me alone." I brought her home, let her out of the carrier and she has shown up for meals and lived in the back yard ever since.

But over time, other cats--who to a whisker have homes elsewhere--have encroached on her food bowl. I now have 3 bowls and sometimes leave food on the patio concrete. Little Girl gets fed any time she shows up. She'll let me pet her: she wants to be petted, but she won't come into the house.

Which is what is so perplexing about her disappearance. Where did she go and why? My neighbor, her birth mother, thinks she's done what she did over two years ago. Feeling the strain of too many other cats, she's moved on. I hate to think that, but it's better than all the other alternatives my cat-loving mind has come up with.

So, LG, I pray the Lord has had mercy on your wanderings, and you are once again a single cat, the object of someone else's loving eye.