Miska's adventures
Miska is an orange tabby cat. He was born on September 27, 2009 in a closet at a group home with a brother and two sisters. His older brother also lives there. When he was eight weeks old, he came home with me to live with me, my husband Matt, and our cat called Cat. We started calling the adult 'Big Cat'. And thus came Miska to us.
Miska was an active kitten, and liked to pounce on anything that moved- like toes under blankets. He also liked to sit in front of the fire. He went to the vet and was neutered when he was four months old. He stayed inside through most of the winter, but we showed him the snow a couple times. Come spring, we let him out in the daytime. We also let Big Cat out during the day. Miska squeaked. He did not know how to meow. On Sunday, June 20, 2010, I went two work and Matt let the cats out because they were fighting as usual. Later that afternoon, there were thunderstorms, Miska's first. That night, Miska did not come home.
The next day we started looking for him- scanning the sides of the road, walking around the neighborhood calling to him. We found an animal poop with reddish fur in it a. Few days after he went missing, but it didn't seem to be the right shade, so we kept up hope. A week after he disappeared, Matt made missing cat posters and handed them around the neighborhood. No sign of him, but in August our neighbor's daughter saw a cat meeting his description by the mailboxes.
January 15, Matt got a call from a neighbor saying she thought she had our cat under her house; he had been fighting with her cat. It was the coldest week of the year, with temperatures down to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit every night. January 20 it was snowing lightly and we saw fresh cat tracks crossing the road and going down to the neighbor's house. We looked under her house and saw him. We spent an hour coaxing him out, and when he left, he ran right to our house and hid underneath. We tried to shut the vent holes, but Matt couldn't find all of them and he escaped a couple days later. We started feeding him through the trapdoor under the house. Matt occasionally saw glimpses of him. He'd eat for a dew days, the not come around for a few days.
March 21 my mother-in-law thought she saw cat tracks in the fresh snow. We looked, and found fisher tracks instead. A few days later, Miska came back to eat, and we shut all the vent holes, trapping him under our house. Slowly, he came closer to us. With him unable to get outside, we opened the trapdoor. Matt spent time hanging out with him in the crawlspace. Monday night, after we went to bed, we heard a jar fall off thee kitchen counter (that had been there for months). We also found cat tracks on the vanity. Matt stayed up last night trying to wait for Miska to go to the kitchen so he could close the trapdoor. After several failed attempts, I woke up for work and Matt saw my old hamper and decided to use it as a trap. Shortly after I got to work, Matt tested that he had caught Miska, who then tore through the house before hiding in the bathroom. He is still in the bathroom.