Day Five

Tasha is missing. I last saw her on Thursday, come in late afternoon to nose out some stinky food from Floyd's bowl, her favorite eating spot.  However, Thursday also brought HomoDommi and Girl- and Boy-Child(ren), in from Boise for a long weekend to celebrate Girl-Child's 9th birthday.  The children are hungry for pets, in their pet-less rental home in Idaho (except for the fish), so all the cats, including Tasha, were greeted with open arms and much enthusiasm.  It appears to have been a little too much for Tasha, already hounded by Winnifred whenever on the property.  She tore out of the house before eating anything and did not return.

Someone sighted her on Friday morning, down at the end of the block, but nothing since.  We had a birthday party with eight nine-year-olds running screaming around the house on Saturday, in-between pouring rain storms, and the family left late in the afternoon on Sunday.

She has never been gone this long before. One night: yes, two nights: much more rarely, but also yes. Not three nights. Never six whole nights. Never even 48 hours without checking in at some point of the day or night, pushing in through the cat door and walking through the whole house, meowing cautiously, until she finds me and rubs up against my knee to get her personal daily cuddle.

I am, frankly, a basket case.  Mater Familias, who is visiting, has been a trooper, putting off trips to Powells and the museum in favor of stalking the multiple organizations who receive stray and lost cats.  She has walked around the block with me after dark, with a flashlight and a treat box, shaking it like those "Trick or Treat for Unicef" nickel boxes of my youth, calling for a hungry, scared kitty. So far, as is obvious, nothing has come up. I had hopes of the vacant house behind us and five doors up, which is being extensively remodeled, and where a neighbor's cat was found in a crawlspace on Monday, but no dice.

I have been locking Fred in at night, and often most of the day, so that she can't keep Tasha away from the property. I have been nosy and for me, quite pushy, about knocking on neighbor's doors and asking them if they've seen her.  I've left flyers about her in the mailboxes of everyone on this block, and stapled signs on telephone poles in a two-block radius. I've lain awake for hours in the middle of the night, thinking I just heard her quiet, scratchy meow -- but she so far has proved not to be there.

I have mentioned before that there are 20,000 stray and feral cats in Portland. There are about 10 separate animal shelters, and there is no one coordinating place to go to find lost pets. Every morning I look at four different online lists of Found Cats -- the county site, the state site, the Emergency Hospital site (for injured animals), and another charity Animal Aid site. (I only found out about the other 7 places this morning.) We went to the Oregon Humane Society today, a beautiful facility with rooms named for corporate and individual donors. There, I saw about 15 cats (and another 30 or more who have been around long enough to be lounging in large, comfortable enclosures, hoping to be adopted). The OHS only accepts strays when it has an open cage -- today, she said, the list to get a cat into the OHS cages was 950 cats long.

At the Multnomah County Animal Shelter, which is about 15 miles east of the city in the pretty tourist town of Troutdale, Oregon, I saw at least 70 cats -- even the ones in hospital treatment -- because the aide happened to be free at the moment.  That facility is functional and concrete, with long corridors full of doors to narrow rooms full of cages of cats piled floor to ceiling. The cats are obviously cared for, but bored. They are kept for three days after reaching full health, and then sent out to one of the more public shelters for adoption.

Tasha has been microchipped, her first owner (Hans) told me. But I don't know the number -- I had intended to have the vet read it when she had her annual checkup last month. I forgot, and then put off taking her in because, well, it seemed a small thing.  Hans also told me she was licensed, but I don't know if he got the standard 3-year license or the cheaper less-faith-in-their-survival 1-year license.  If the former, any official shelter will call Hans. But he has moved away to "somewhere on 40th" I was told, (I don't even know his last name) and I haven't much faith that he will let me know she has been found. (If my cat had been absconded with by a neighbor who hadn't gone to the bother of licensing her, I wouldn't give her back.)

Our fear is that she is locked in someone's shed. Saturday afternoon, after the rains stopped, and all day Sunday, were nice enough that people were out doing Autumnal Maintenance on their yards.  She might have run in to escape a cat, or curious, and then been closed inside.  Since Sunday, it has been raining and cold, so no one has been outside or messing with their sheds. Tonight is garbage night on our block, so I'm hoping that someone will have to open up their shed to pull out the garbage can, and they'll release a hungry and pissed off little black cat, too.