Lost and Found Cat
As I said in an earlier post, there were six original Tozman cats. One of these was a lovely young ginger tom cat whom I named Ginger. I am not really so hopeless at naming animals but I had never intended becoming so involved so I started referring to them as ‘the ginger one’, ‘the tabby tom’ and so on until the cats started to think those were their names, so they stuck.
Anyway, I digress. Ginger was Betty’s son and coming up to two years old. He was a quiet, undemanding cat and was great friends with the two tabby cats, Topsy and Toby. My husband especially, formed a close bond with him and found Ginger loved to play and romp.
One day during the Christmas and Turkish Bayram holiday Ginger just disappeared. He had been a bit put out when we rescued the neglected Van cat. We had also had an overnight stay away with some relatives. For a couple of weeks he had been rather distant and preoccupied. We returned from our overnight stay and Ginger was pleased to see us but smelled of cat urine. It seemed that another cat had sprayed him. The next day we went out for the day and when we came home Tabby Tom was sitting proudly on Ginger’s favourite chair on the terrace. Ginger did not come home for dinner, not that day, nor the next or the next.
I walked around the neighbourhood calling him to no avail. Over the following months everytime I saw a ginger cat, I hoped against hope it was him. I would drag my husband along who would always say, ‘How can you think this is Ginger? It doesn’t look anything like him!’ Once I even tried to convince him that a female cat was Ginger, so desperate was I to believe. Deep inside of course, I assumed he was dead. How could he have willingly given up the comforts of the Tozman terrace, the chairs, cushions, water, biscuits and latterly access to our house and bed?
Then one day, nearly eleven months later I was walking down a residential road that I use as a shortcut to our butchers. On a gate post I spotted a familiar orange shape. I drew near and this time I felt very optimistic. The cat came to me and rubbed my hand. When I said ‘Gingy Gingy’ he seemed to respond. I hurried home and got my camera. I ran back and took this picture:
I had to wait for him to settle down and stop playing with my camera strap which had always been his habit. I then took the picture home to compare with my earlier pictures of him. I compared his markings stripe by stripe and each feature. It was indeed Ginger. He had only moved a couple of streets away. He had a lot of friends (most of them female) and looked very healthy. I took my husband back and he agreed this time. Ginger playfully bit his hand as he aways used to. Recently, he has moved to a garden even nearer our home.
I guess at two years old, it was time for him to strike out alone. Maybe Tabby Tom, who is almost certainly his father, made him leave. It was such a relief to find him alive and well, still feral and free.