It is a month today since Willis went missing.
I was mildly surprised, but not concerned when
Willis was not on the front doorstep when I came downstairs.
I've sometimes wondered if he has an internal clock which has
him waiting for me each morning, or if perhaps he hears my
measured tread on the 14 stairs to the main floor and hurries
from one of the blanket-lined 'beds' on the side porch to pose
on the doormat, face up-tilted to the window in a beguiling
reminder that he needs his breakfast served before any other
concern can claim my attention.
It was a sunny morning, but with a hint of chilly
wind. We needed to leave shortly after nine, but took turns
poking our heads out the door to call, "Willis, Willis!" He
might have noticed something behind the stable or down at the
curve of the lane, some matter that required his urgent supervision,
causing him a delay in appearing for breakfast.
We were home shortly after 1 p.m.--and no
tweedy-coated cat came to meet the car when we drove in. No
Willis strolling up from the shop or rounding the corner by the
side porch. The wind had picked up, moving clouds across the
sun. We dressed warmly and went out to search, quartering the
dooryard, plodding along the lane, shouting his name into the
windy afternoon. Jim looked in the shop--Willis might have
whisked through the door when Jim was shutting up the night
before. I prowled through the stable, back around the garden.
Willis was nowhere to be found.
Late on the previous afternoon a battered pickup
had trundled up the lane, bringing two men who were interested
in one of Jim's restored tractors. They decided early on to buy
the tractor but stayed endlessly [as men do] sharing fond
memories of the tractors they had known, stories of crops
planted and harvested in years gone by. Passing the pantry
window I looked out to see Willis taking it all in, listening
and observing from his post on a stack of lumber. Now, I turned
to Jim and asked, already dreading his reply, "Did you see
Willis after the men left?"
It had been nearly dark when the men finally
drove off, the headlights of their elderly pickup receding
slowly down the lane. "No," Jim reflected. "He was there
underfoot the whole time we were talking, but, come to think of
it, I didn't see him when I turned off the shop lights."
We realized, with heavy hearts, what had likely
happened. Willis, from kittenhood, has had a fascination with
vehicles. We have many times had to extract him from a
visitor's car or truck. He once slipped into our van when Jim
was loading building supplies, hunkered down, invisible and unnoticed
beneath a length of insulation batting, then popped out between
the front seats after he had ridden with us several miles down
the road. He stowed away in the tool compartment when an
acquaintance came by to install a water purifying system. He was
discovered at the next stop in Columbia and returned home by the
kindly man and his sons in time for supper.
Jim was to deliver the purchased tractor on
Monday. When he phoned to confirm the details he inquired if, by
chance, the men had found a cat in the back of their truck. Of
course they had not.
I visualized several scenarios in grim detail.
Willis had vaulted from the pickup bed at a busy intersection,
only to be flattened as he darted wildly between moving vehicles.
He had been thrown from the truck on a lonely stretch of road,
lost, hungry, cold.
The weather had turned dismal by Sunday morning,
bursts of icy rain slanted in on a harsh wind, the temperature
plummeted. I couldn't choose between the two endings I had
devised--a quick death beneath the wheels of a car, or the slow
sad misery of cold and hunger. We told ourselves we would never
know for certain what had happened to Willis.
I didn't share the news of Willis's disappearance
with our daughter until the third day of his absence. Her
response was one of grief for the loss of 'the greatest blue-grey
bear cat in Kentucky."
I told myself sternly that the era of Willis was
over, but a dozen times a day I found myself looking for him--in
the snug basket on the back porch, on the lumber stack by the
shop door.
Wednesday, four days past Willis's disappearance, the early morning was grey and unpromising. I
plodded down the stairs accompanied by a retinue of the cats who
have house privileges. Unthinkingly reverting to habit, I
stopped to peer out the glass of the front door before
continuing into the kitchen.
He was there! Willis was sitting on the shabby
doormat, face tilted up in greeting. I opened the door, scooped
him up, burying my face in his stripy fur. I felt the first
tentative stirrings of his purr. By the time I was halfway up
the stairs with him clutched against my sweatshirt, the purr was
approaching full throttle.
Jim was only half awake when I dumped Willis on
his pillow. "See who has come home!" Jim, startled, rolled over
to find himself nose to nose with Willis who was fairly
vibrating with enthusiastic purring and excited meows.
It wasn't until he had eaten, washed his face and
settled his whiskers that we noticed the injury to his right
hind leg. Willis started off the porch on three legs:
hop-hop-rest. Hop, hop, rest. We felt carefully for broken
bones. There were none. No cuts, no visible swelling, but a
very definite limp as though his hip was slightly out of place.
We think we've reconstructed the 'rest of the
story.' Willis, overcome by curiosity, jumped into the back of
the visiting men's truck, sniffed about, poked through the
assortment of things I recall being there, curled up comfortably
for a snooze and rode off into the sunset. We suspect that he
was awake and rather alarmed by the time the truck stopped at
the junction of Sanders Ridge Road and Rt 206. Looking for a
way out of the truck bed he likely was pitched abruptly onto the
blacktop landing heavily and wrenching his hip. His homing device
was working well, but it took him 4 slow and painful days and
nights to hobble home. Did he shelter in a shed or under a
porch, burrow into a leafy ditch while the rain pelted down?
The details we'll never know. Willis stayed
close to the front porch during those first days at home. He
ate well, hopped along the drive, stretched on the sun-warmed
concrete of the south porch floor. He managed limited patrol
duties bouncing along with the injured leg tucked up. By his
second week at home he was putting all four feet on the ground,
but using only three legs when he wanted to put on speed. The
first few attempts at leaping to sit on the retaining wall ended
in an undignified fumble.
With his adventure now a month behind him, Willis
is almost back to normal. His gait is slower than in the past,
but his balance is good, he can land fairly gracefully on the
garden wall to supervise and get in the way as I prod at
emerging perennials. He ambles behind me down the lane to wait
crouching at the bend, camouflaged in his tweed coat, popping
out of a tangle of dried weeds and dusty leaves with his
familiar "Aha! Gotcha!"
Mindful that this painful experience was unlikely
to teach Willis what he ought to know, we are more diligent than
ever to locate his where-abouts when a vehicle leaves the
dooryard. The UPS truck is suspect, as is a neighbor's vehicle
left unattended with the window down or the door partly open.
When one of Jim's tractor customers rolls in I round up Willis
and shut him into the back entry where he lurks with flattened
ears showing his annoyance.
We scold Willis and remind him of the trouble he
has caused.
We tell him that his recent escapade may have permanently
impaired his agility, taken a few cat years off his life. We
note when a damp morning chill seems to stiffen his hip joint;
we see him carefully calculating a leap that until a month ago
would have been smoothly automatic.
Mostly we are relieved and happy to have Willis
back home, nosing into our business, over-seeing our work,
providing companionship, secure in his job as head cat and farm
manager.
