Four weeks ago, one of our three cats disappeared.

*POOF*

Brodie vanished into thin air just like that.

(As if he had a Magic Ring.)

He was an indoor cat, and not an adventurous one at that, which is why the vanishing was so odd. One day he was there, the next day – POOF! Brodie had disappeared.

(Payton was very upset Brodie was missing.)

We combed the neighborhood, asked neighbors, put out fliers (this was Payton’s idea), called the pound, called the rescue shelters.

No Brodie anywhere.

Each night on my walks, I kept an eye out for him, occasionally calling for him.

No Brodie still.

We gave up, thinking Brodie had died somewhere out there in that big world he was always so scared of. All alone, without us when we had been his family for 11 years.

I hate to admit it, but that thought was the only one to choked me up. The idea of Brodie dying somewhere all alone when we were really all he knew of the world made me want to cry.

It’s not that I didn’t love Brodie. I did. In the way anyone can love a pansy ass pet because that’s what Brodie was. You couldn’t uncross your legs while in the same room without him jumping 3 feet and high-tailing it out of there. He would do the same thing if you sneezed. It was annoying at times.

But I was surprised at how much grief I didn’t feel. Even with his skittish habits, he was still a member of the family for 11 years. Yet it was nothing like when my 16 year old Himalayan cat, Mikie, died in 2003 and I bawled my eyes out for days. I was more upset when that cat died than when my grandfather died 2 years earlier. I’d love that cat since I was a tweeny girl. When Mikie died, it was emotionally horrible.

But Brodie? I didn’t go through any grieving process. I suppose it’s hard to when you don’t know. There was no trip to the vet with final goodbyes before he was put down. While chances are high he is dead, you just don’t know for certain. It was easier to think maybe he’d gotten lost and another family had taken him in. While I wouldn’t like that either (because he’s my cat) at least he isn’t alone in the woods, dying some slow and painful death.

As we approached the one month mark since Brodie disappeared, I began to accept he was truly gone from us. Still, the grief wasn’t sharp and shattering. It was just there, making me sad when I thought about it, but not stopping me in my tracks to mourn a pet we had had for over 11 years. And I felt guilty for not mourning Brodie more. He may have been a pansy ass scaredy-cat, but he was a good cat.

He was the best snuggle cat. You could pick him up and he would snuggle right into your neck. You could hold him on his back, just like you do a baby, and he would purr and snuggle down into your arm. And a foot rubber! He was such a foot rubber, which I loved. I could stick out my bare foot at any time and he would come up and rub on my foot. He had the best fur and it felt so good on my foot.

Absence does make the heart fonder and as the weeks passed, I remembered the sweet things Brodie would do. It was depressing to realize he was gone and would never rub my foot or snuggle in my neck again.

But on Friday night, there was a message on our machine waiting for us when we got home.

One of our neighbors, bless her heart, had kept our flyer with Brodie’s picture and our phone number these four weeks. While out on a walk Friday evening, she was almost positive she found Brodie in the woods in the back of our neighborhood where they are building new houses. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t let her close enough to catch him, so she left her number for us to call her.

We called her the next morning and she showed me the area where she saw Brodie. In her description of the cat, there was no doubt in my mind it was him. I called and walked all around those woods, but I couldn’t find Brodie.

It was so hard, knowing he was *that* close to being back with us, but now he’d slipped away again. I began kicking myself for having plans on Friday night and not getting home until late. Any other Friday night, we would have been home, but no, it had to be that Friday.

If only we’d been home…

I went out to run errands, getting back home late Saturday afternoon. I rounded up the family to go look for Brodie again, just in case. Now that we knew he wasn’t dead, the urge to do something to find him was as strong as it was when he first went missing. So we walked back to the construction area and the place he was last seen.

*POOF*

There he was.

Just like that, Brodie was back again.

He’s so thin now that I had a moment of doubt that it was him. His face is so narrow from all of the weight loss that he looks different. But I called his name and Brodie answered with a meow, and I knew it was him.

(I can think of one neighbor who will be getting a batch of my best cookies.)

As we spent time with Brodie Saturday night, holding and petting him, I thought, how surprising he survived for a month in the wild. This declawed cat, the one who is such a scaredy-cat, such a wimp and overall sissy – and he survives for four weeks in the woods.

Brodie is made of tougher stuff than we knew.

Gasp!

(That’s when it came to me.)

Just like Bilbo, Brodie ran off from home on some grand adventure, I’m sure seeing creatures that are mythical to his eyes. Possibly the rat was his orc, a hawk his ringwraith. Somehow he made it through it all, surviving by his wits (which we doubted he had) and courage (which we not only doubted, but denied he had). Realizing there was more to Brodie than we knew made me recall Gandalf’s description of hobbits…

‘Hobbits really are amazing creatures, as I have said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch

Brodie is the real mythical hobbit.

(And he’s not at all offended by it.)

(In fact, he gladly takes on the title, so this should end the whole mythical hobbit brouhaha once and for all.)

(If we’re all completely honest, this cat better fits the description than any blogger whose husband elevates her to the level of Al Gore, who we all know created the internet.)

(Does this mean a popular blogger has just been usurped by a pussy cat? I think so.)

Yes, Brodie has certainly been there and we are so very glad he is back again.

Welcome home, you mythical hobbit.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 3:33 am and is filed under I Couldn't Make This Shit Up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.