Christine's Big Day Out

Here's the story of a little black cat named Christine, and possibly the last big adventure of her life.

Christine's family moved in to the house next to us a year ago. We knew them very slightly - the mom Laura, and her four children. Laura had lived with her husband in England, and lately in a house on Hart Road, she told us, but was going through a divorce and was lease-purchasing the house to get a new start. She rode horses, which gave her common ground with Lee Ann, and even shopped at the Tack Trunk, where Lee Ann works. This all came out in our across-the-back fence chats with Laura in the first week of her residence, a year ago, and we have hardly seen her since. Later, when we really could have used this information, we had forgotten almost all of it. And we never knew she had a cat.

On Saturday I had been doing work on our back porch, fixing trim and installing a gutter. It was a nice day and I left the back doors open so our cats and dog Danny could pass freely to the back yard. I was inside for a while, upstairs, when I heard cat spitting and yowling in the kitchen and found our cats, fat-tailed and snarly, facing off with an unseen feline holed up under our stepback cabinet. This is not so unusual for us - the neighborhood tomcat comes in sometimes and plays variations on this scene.

Later Lee Ann came home and lured the cat out of hiding with smoked turkey. Lo and behold, it was not the tomcat but an emaciated and lethargic little black girl kitty that we had never seen before. But this is not unusual either. Our town is overrun with strays, and we have taken in a string of them. So we decide to feed and shelter this cat for the rest of the weekend and then take her to the vet on Monday to see what could be done. She looks like she hasn't eaten for weeks and might have one of those fatal cat diseases but want to give her every chance. What a poor kitty - dumped by her owners, homeless, hopeless, facing starvation and danger, grimly hanging on until finally she found her way to us.

So today I am at the vet. He checks out the stray, notes serious jaundice and remarks that she is "no spring chicken." Then he absently scans her with a gadget and finds to our surprise that she is microchipped. A few calls and we know the cat's name, owner's name (Laura Hodge) and that the cat was registered in London, England but there is no current contact info - so that's a dead end. I OK lab tests - but I am reeling from the microchip, and the fact that this cat is from England. How did she get here? Numerous improbable scenarios run through my head.

Later the vet calls to advise that the cat is negative for HIV and leukemia. Either of those would put us in obvious pull-the-plug territory, but now we have to decide what to do next. I OK more tests. Lee Ann calls me to see how things are going (she is at work, conveniently) and I tell her what I know. The name Laura Hodge rings a bell. "I think we have a customer by that name," she says, and checking the Tack Trunk records finds an address on Hart Road (a few miles away - not as impressive a trip for a cat as from England, but still a remarkable distance for a feeble stray to travel) and a phone number. No answer on the phone, but finally this evening a woman answers. I am thinking this won't be the right Laura Hodge, but here's the conversation:

LA - "Hi, I'm calling for Laura Hodge."

LH - "This is she."

LA - "Oh, hi, my name is Lee Ann McAlpine, and we have your cat Christine."

LH - "You have! I'm so glad! We've been looking everywhere for her. Where is she?"

LA - "Believe it or not, she got all the way in to town, to 437 East Main Street in Lebanon."

LH - "Really? Well, we live at 435 East Main Street."

So all mysteries were solved, but in a most anticlimactic way. Christine is 18 years old. She has been around the world with her family, our next-door neighbors, registered and chipped in London, and is pretty close to the end of her corporeal tether. Her physical condition is not a result of extended time starving in the wild, or disease, but age. And her time as a 'stray' was probably about one minute's travel time from her house to ours on Saturday, so there was no thrilling stowaway trip across the Atlantic or cross-country epic through the farmland of Warren County.

Gourmet canned cat food - $4. Vet check and blood tests - $187. Two days of entertaining "Incredible Journey" cat scenarios - priceless.