My Annie went missing last week. She is chipped. Doesn’t help one bit though when she is found locked in my next door neighbors’ garage.

Annie Cakes NEVER leaves our grounds…unless there is food being offered in my neighbors’ cat trap two doors down, on the other side of my house. *sigh*

The lady across the street had a friend visit from San Francisco who brought her indoor cat along, and then let it loose in the fenced back yard. Of course with a cat, there’s no such thing as a fence. I spent half an hour biking around looking for it. Fortunately, it had just gone into the yard next door and gone to ground. Found it safe, but cripes, that was a dumb thing to do.

I couldn’t keep a collar on him. I tried. I had to use breakaways so that he didn’t strangle himself. They lasted maybe two days each. Neighbor would find it hanging on his fence or whatever. He did have a chip. I called the pound. At that time, they didn’t automatically check for chips (5 years ago) which I think is criminal.

If Tobias were injured, he made his way here to heal. Before he was “mine, he got himself ripped up pretty good and came here. I brought him in, cleaned him up, made a bed for him in the utility room, gave him food and water. After that, I decided he was mine. Or maybe he decided I was his.

Tobias would not have gotten lost. What I was afraid of was that he got shut up in somebody’s shed or garage for several days. That was the hottest summer we’d ever had in my memory. Believe me, I’d rather think someone adopted him. However, he would have escaped someone else the first chance he got and come back here.

I used to whistle for him and he came running. Wherever he was, he came running. He spent a lot of time in the woods behind my house which is part of a city park. A wild animal could have gotten him. We had an aggressive raccoon that had made its home in my yard in some bushes. He didn’t scare. Could have been rabid. Animal control came and got him. He had threatened Tobias. If there one out there, there could have been others.

Make sure your current cats are tagged, or implanted with chips. This will at least help protect them if they ever end up in a pound (animals are always checked for chips). I know collars on cats are a supreme pain.

Heh, the neighbor on the left is a single guy. No way! The neighbor on the right I never see. A neighbor down the street used to occasionally bring me food and he was the worst cook on the planet. I’m a gourmet cook. The fried chicken he brought one time was a thigh, greasy and oh so disgusting. I thanked him politely, tasted it and threw it in the trash. I need to be a multimillionaire so I can hire my own chef to fix me nutritionally good, low-sodium, tasty vegetarian dishes without the damn squash they put in everything. You’d think squash was the only vegetable in the world for vegetarian dishes. Or eggplant. I hate both. There’s a vegetarian restaurant on the Plaza that fixes wonderfully creative dishes and they are delicious! Wish I could afford to eat there daily. Now, I can’t get there at all. Dammit.

I still cry over my Tobias who left one morning for his usual cat neighborhood visits and never returned. I had had him for 10 years, don’t know what happened to him and never will. It’s been five years and still I grieve. My two little guys now are house cats and I can’t imagine life without them.

How about this What would it take to make you put down your own healthy pet? I can’t imagine that. Would you do it if a neighbor felt threatened and told you to get rid of the pet or be sued? I would either move or tell the neighbor to pound sand. Even if my pet bit the neighbor, short of killing someone, no one would harm my pet.

I have heard of people that have done that. In my opinion the person that would execute a pet without the pet being forcibly taken by legal process should be put down along with the animal.