Sophie

As annoying as pets can be - especially cats who insist on being fed and watered at the first hints of sunrise - it's not until something unexpected happens to one that you realize what an integral part of the family they are.

We've had Sophie for 18 years now, which means that Son #1 (now 22) was 4, and Son #2 (now 18) was just a baby.  It's not likely that either one of them remembers a time when we did not have her.  She's slowed down over the years, to the point where she sometimes needs help jumping up onto the bed or the couch, and to the point where the days of doing things like jumping up on the counter are long gone.  She's had some health issues in recent months, and even though those issues didn't approach the level of life-threatening, we had begun to mentally prepare ourselves for the inevitable.

When we got home the night of the Academy Awards, she somehow slipped out the front door when we were taking the garbage out, and we didn't notice she was gone until we woke up the next morning.  By then she was long gone, or at least gone.  To say that we felt horrible was an understatement - even though she was old, this was certainly not the way we wanted to lose her, and since she rarely went outside for more than a few minutes at a time (in our backyard, usually to nosh on a little grass), our confidence in her ability to survive in the big bad outdoors was not very high.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending.  After 9 days of putting up signs, visiting vets, walking, running and driving all over the neighborhood, she was found near our local supermarket, and dropped off at the local vet, where Debra was able to pick her up.  I was on a work trip out of town, and was frankly amazed at the outcome - it just didn't seem possible after all that time that we'd see her again.

So now she is back, a little lighter and a little more tired than normal (although with a cat, can you really tell?).  The picture above was taken on Saturday morning, in her favorite place - a place where she is spending a lot of time right now.  We know that she won't last forever, but we're glad to have her back home where she can go back to being her old, annoying normal self.  In other words, part of the family.