HAVE YOU LOST A COMPANION ANIMAL

HAVE YOU LOST A COMPANION ANIMAL?

NEVER GIVE UP -- TWO STORIES OF HOPE

BY = ANNE MUL= LER

IT CAN TAKE WEEKS, MONTHS, O= R EVEN YEARS,

BUT FINDING = THEM CAN AND DOES HAPPEN

<= /o:p>

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news= /local-beat/Money-Is-No-Object-in-Search-For-Missing-Pooch-72612147.html?yhp=3D1

This article caught my attention and came as another reminder that no matter how bleak the situation looks, you mustn't give up.

I recently read about a = man who had left his dog, Casey (photo above) with a pet sitter= for a week. While he was gone, Casey jumped a four-foot = fence and took off running. After a d= iligent search a week later, she was fo= und hanging around someone's home= who had been feeding her. "She went crazy when she saw me," her human guardian said. "She was whining with joy for about a half an hour." <= /span>So was he, no doubt!

I was reminded of my own experience: Several years ago I had some furniture removed from my house, and later that evening discovered that one of our very skittish and semi-feral cats had gotten out of the house during the commotion. I could only think that he had been hiding inside the sofa that had been taken to a landfill. We drove hours to the various landfills to find our sofa and check inside, but we met with no luck at all. For months, I imagined my poor, frightened boy freezing, starving and huddled inside of the sofa springs. I imagined the sofa hoisted in the air by trucks, then dropped and smashed into bits and buried. Not = good!

Photo of BeeBee - left with the elfin face - his brother, Bee, right.

After our landfill search yielded nothing, I began to post everywhere in our neighborhood thinking he might have jumped from the truck prior to being hauled away. I didn't really believe that scenario, but was willing to try anything. The first round of fliers brought a couple of calls, and we followed those leads without success. He had been gone for two months and a bitter cold winter had set in. The howling snow storms buried my hope of finding my boy alive. I called my old friend, Ellie, to commiserate with her because the last time we'd talked she was grieving over a lost cat. I was the one who had turned her on to cats many years before. I got her to adopt just one lit<= span style=3D'font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Tahoma; letter-spacing:-.45pt'>tle black cat named Toby, and left her with the comment that went something like this, "How would you like to never = interact with another member of your own species?" That comment led her to pick up six more cats from the street. She was then the only member of her species in her house. Anyway, when Ellie answered the phone, she told me that she had gotten her cat back after TWO YEARS of try= ing, and the cat was purring happily next to h= er at that moment!!! "Post again," she told me= . I did. Not too many days later, a neigh<= span style=3D'font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Tahoma; letter-spacing:-.5pt'>bor reported that he had seen a cat fitting BeeBee's description. He said he was hanging out with a few "little old <= span style=3D'font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Tahoma; letter-spacing:-.15pt'>lady cats" in back of his house. You guessed right, it was indeed BeeBee!!!!!! He had been living within 1,000 feet of my house. Through the brutal weather, he had wood piles that were covered with tarps to sleep and hide in, and hot potatoes that my neigh<= span style=3D'font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Tahoma; letter-spacing:-.15pt'>bor fed the cats outside. So he was taken good care of by the other cats, my neighbor, and whatever name you want to give to the healing force of the universe. No, never give up!