Lucy

Paddington bear arrived as a stowaway coming from "Deepest Darkest Peru", sent by his Aunt Lucy who has gone to live in the Home for Retired Bears in Lima.

That is how the tale of Paddington begins to unfold. Unfortunately for us, our Paddington went missing. Its been 14 days and our sweet, shy, polydactyl, all black snaggle toothed cat has not returned. We sent out an amber pet alert to 500 neighbors, we flyered the neighborhood, we set two humane traps, nightly, baited with Kentucky Fried chicken. Friends of Ferals recommends that technique because the stench of the chicken is so great. We called a woman who tracks animals using bloodhounds. She charges $1500 which is more than we can afford, but she also recommended baiting with Kentucky Fried Chicken. We have searched through our neighbors yard. We have a missing cat report filed at all the rescue places. We tried not to lose hope. But there are coyotes in the neighborhood and there are a lot of missing cats right now. Its been a very sad time for us.

Yesterday we went to the Humane Society. We were there for 4 hours. We've been stopping by periodically, checking the found and feral cat rooms. Yesterday was different. We went in search of a buddy to fill the void in our house.

Our house has been chaotic with 4 kids, 3 cats and a dog. But we are used to that chaos. The calm we felt with one fewer being...well it was unacceptable. It made us uncomfortable and sad. Paddington's lack of presence just felt like a hole, in our house, in our hearts.

So we visited the shelter. In some ways it felt bad, were we giving up? How could we give up? But that hurt we all felt well, it was just omnipresent and oppressive. We had to make that hurt dissipate.

We stayed at the shelter for 4 hours. I asked to have time with various cats. One was too mellow, one was too shy, one was too skittish, one was too hyper. None of them made me feel like the hurt could go away. Until we saw this one. All black but she did not have amber eyes like most all black cats. She had emerald eyes, like Paddington. She reached out and grabbed me. She rubbed against the cage and purred. When we had play time with her she jumped around, excited without being hyper. She purred and reached her paws at our faces, touching us, filling our hearts. This was Lucy and we all knew it. Lucy, the relation to Paddington, of sorts. The little being who has begun to heal our hearts.

This morning she peed on my shoe.