20/6/2019

We got our fur-baby Xena back 6 weeks after she went missing. It was such a relief to find her. As is often the case, we only really realise how much we care for our pets after they’re gone.

I had put messages on 6 Facebook pages to try and find her, put up several posters in the area, phoned the SSPCA and the Edinburgh Dog & Cats Home regularly, contacted all the vets in Leith and had been out several times looking for her on the streets. A photo of a cat that had been found was posted on Facebook in November. Someone notified me about this a day after it had been posted, and when I saw the photo I knew it was Xena. So I contacted the person and arranged to go to their house that evening to pick her up. The house was in Pilrig, 1.3km from our house. I know cats and dogs can roam quite a distance from their homes but I was surprised that she had gone that far. I also thought that someone might have picked her up and was looking after her but actually she was out on the streets for the full 6 weeks.

Xena had wandered into someone’s garden and followed their own cat into their house. The people there had fed her and taken her to their vet to see if there was a microchip, which was very good of them. When I got to their house the gentleman told me that Xena had hidden under one of their children’s beds and that’s where I found her. She looked so sad and forlorn when I saw her. She wasn’t injured thankfully, just pretty dirty and I was delighted to take her back home. She was throwing up every bit of food that she ate for 5 weeks after we got her back. God knows what she was eating or  not eating while she was on the streets for 6 weeks. The poor thing!

I was very grateful that the family had looked after Xena for 24 hours and that the person notified me of the post on Facebook and I told them that. Even though I don’t use Facebook all that often, it was very useful in this situation. The support and help that we got from people in the Facebook community was great. We bought a cat halter and lead to let her sit outside again. It’s taking a long while for her to get used to the halter because she really doesn’t like it but we can’t risk losing her again. She will be 20 years old next year and now has the jitters – while she’s resting she gets small muscle spasms, which might be a sign of old age or dementia maybe. So I think if she was to wander off again, I don’t think she’d be able to find her way back home.

All’s well that ends well thankfully. It’s so good to have our beautiful, now spoilt, feline companion back.