spike's little adventure

Recognize this little booger?



He decided to go on a little 3-day adventure in the freezing cold. Highly upsetting for us! What happened was that he had accidentally gotten locked in the garage the other day, so when Nathan came home and didn't have a house key, he opened the garage door with the keypad and out ran Spike. Nathan said he got several houses away on the street behind us before he lost sight of him. To make matters worse, we had recently taken off his collar because he has been having some skin allergies and the collar really irritates them. So he was gone, no clue where he went, without any ID on him at all. And remember, our baby is FIV positive, so he really doesn't need to be in the dangerous outdoors where he could easily get sick, or infect another cat!

He finally started hanging around the house, much to my relief, as I was worried he wouldn't know how to get home since he is not an outdoor cat here at all. But he made it to our neighbor Drew's house and decided to make himself at home in the crawl space underneath. He would come out and meow at us every now and then, and helped himself to the food we left out one night on the porch, but would flip out every time we started towards him. Nathan tried to get to him by getting under Drew's house a few times, but the one time he got close, Spike flipped out and attacked him after hearing a strange noise. So frustrating!

Finally, Monday afternoon, we decided to leave early, determined to catch him or lure him home. We wanted to avoid using animal traps if at all possible, because we knew it would traumatize him. He was already mad at Nathan, but started responding to me when I saw him outside by meowing back at me when I talked about food, so we decided I would be the best one to try and get him to come back. After we got home, we opened the door to the crawl space, and I called to him and shook his food bag. I went back to our porch and he immediately came out and sat in the doorway. It took probably 20 minutes of crawling towards him little by little on my hands and knees, talking about food and treats, but eventually he let me close enough to pet him and pick him up. It was obvious that he was super hungry and thirsty, because he couldn't stop licking his chops, and his little voice was hoarse.

Once we got him inside, he gulped down tons of water and devoured a Fancy Feast in 2 minutes flat. Then he was extremely needy and meow-y at us all night, wanting nothing but pets and attention. That has kept up ever since. I think it's obvious that even though he won't admit it, he is happy to be home, as evidenced by this shot of him from last night at bedtime:



Yes, he likes to lay perpendicular on the bed with us, the little prince he thinks he is.

I can't even tell you how relieved I am to have him back home. He has been so sweet and I was so worried about him being outside -- since he was a feral rescue, I didn't know if he would ever willingly come home, but he did, without us having to trap him or anything. Finally! We had a chat and I told him he can't EVER do that to me again.