Hello Everyone

I'm feeling SO happy today I just need to share how I feel with some
people that I know will understand!.........Yesterday our darling Bell,
a 2 year old female tabby/white who we adopted from a rescue home in
late April, got lost.

I can't even begin to explain how desolate we all felt.  As a rule, she
(like our 2 children) likes to spend most of her day outdoors, but she
usually only goes walkabout for an hour or so before walking back
through the door and miaowing "I'm home - cuddle me, stroke me, love
me"! Yesterday she was missing for 10 hours ---- it felt like a lifetime.

We searched high and low, walked the streets calling her name over and
over again, all to no avail.  Just after lunch, our 9 year old went and
knocked on all the neighbours doors and asked if they had been in their
garages or sheds at all, and if so would they please look and see if
they had accidentally locked in our puss.

Just an hour before dark, a lady from over the road came and told us
that she and her husband had gone out to sit on their garden bench and
could hear a cat miaowing from the other side of their high fence.  My
husband climbed a ladder up their fence and found that on the other side
there was a small electric substation, surrounded by a 7 feet high wall
- and there she was - our adored Bell sitting in a corner, miaowing
piteously.  So in went husband to get her, but she was so upset she
didn't recognise him, and as he was trying to hand her to our son on the
other side of the wall, Bell scratched his neck, bit our son, then leapt
 into nearby bushes.

Well we tried everything - coaxing, calling, offering her favourite cat
treat nibbles and her favourite squeaky toy, but she would have none of
it.  Eventually, our son could bear no more and broke down into pitiful
sobs pleading "please Bell, come home, I'll give you all my pocket money
and you can have all my bed tonight and I'll sleep on the floor".......

.......and guess what? the little monkey cocked her head to one side as
though considering deeply, then walked casually out of the bushes, laid
her head on his knee and started to purr!

Ten minutes later she was wolfing down her dinner, purring with
contentment while we all four sat shell-shocked on the sofa feeling as
though we had been to hell and back.

What can I say? we never had a cat before Bell, and four months after
she moves in, we're all her willing slaves whose world almost ends when
we think we might never see her again........ain't cats lovely?
Lil