Finding Mr. Limpet

After missing for five days in the freezing cold, one of my neighbors called to say she thought she saw Mr.  Limpet behind her house. We have green space behind our whole row of houses. It was so hard to look for him because we were either trespassing on someone's property, or we would have to be in the thick, thorn-filled blackberry bushes. 

I was so grateful to our neighbor who called because she said we could be in her backyard anytime to look for him. As soon as she called, I went to her house but didn't find any cat. My neighbor said she'd put out tuna to see if he would come out again. While I went to work, my sister went over a few times to check.

We were starting to feel down again, but Katie and I decided to go out one more time at about 9:00 at night. We took a blanket that Mr. Limpet likes to lay on and a flashlight. We got into our neighbor's backyard and started calling for him. That night, there was a huge wind storm and it had been raining throughout the day. The wind was blowing the tall trees behind the blackberry bushes, and they were creaking which sounded almost like a cat. It was so hard to hear.

After a bit, I thought I heard a meow. I called Katie over to see what she thought and she heard it too. We put the blanket down in front of the blackberry bushes, sat in the mud, and meowed back to Mr. Limpet. The meowing was loud and constant but we couldn't see him. After what seemed like forever, he made his way through the blackberry bushes enough that we could finally see him. Katie kept her flashlight on him, and he went right for Katie.

He finally came out of the thorns. I sent Katie a bit away from me to try to trap him. A few steps out, he got scared and ran back under the bushes again. The whole process started all over again and he finally reappeared and climbed onto his blanket. I moved my hand slowly toward him to try to keep him from running. As soon as I got a hold of him, Katie helped wrap him up in the blanket, and we got him back home. We were so happy! We separated him from General Washington until we could take him to the vet to be checked out. We were lucky to get an appointment the next day. The vet gave him a clean bill of health!

As soon as Mr. Limpet got home, he wanted to eat something.

He was lonely too.

We are pretty sure he was mostly just staying in the blackberry bushes.

We were so happy to have him back with us!