TL;DR: My mum’s cat, Mia, went missing. She was then found by some somewhat local teenagers and, after a while, managed to recover at home.
Timeline:
09/03/2024:
This was the day that Mia went missing.
She went out one Saturday morning and just didn’t come home. It was very unlike her as she doesn’t really like going outside and, if she does, she only tends to stay out there for about an hour before coming back home again. She stayed outside the whole day and didn’t come home when night rolled around. My mum went out searching for Mia but she still didn’t come home. She was officially missing.
12/03/2024:
My mum’s best friend made a Facebook post in order to see if anybody had seen Mia (as my mum does not use social media). My mum also started putting some posters up around her town in the hopes that someone would find her and continued to go out at night and search for her.
16/03/2024:
My mum told me that Mia had gone missing.
17/03/2024:
I put a couple of posts up on Facebook in some local Facebook groups. I did later add the street where Mia went missing to the posts, as was suggested by a couple of people.
12/04/2024:
Mia was found hiding under a bush by a couple of teenage girls about 4 miles away from home. The girls tried to coax her out from under the bush, but Mia was too scared to come out. The teenagers left her there.
15/04/2024:
Three days later, Mia had not moved from under the bush. The teenagers came back and managed to get Mia out from under the bush. With some help from their mum, they put Mia into a cat carrier and made a post about her in one of their local Facebook groups.
By some stroke of luck, my mum’s best friend was a part of that Facebook group and saw the post the day it was made. She recognised Mia and called my mum immediately. She also contacted the teenagers’ mum to let her know that she knew who the owner was.
My mum then collected Mia that same day. As soon as Mia heard my mum’s voice, she started meowing for her from inside the carrier. After 5 weeks and 2 days, they were finally reunited.
My mum took Mia home and she was not in the best condition. She was skinny, weak, dehydrated, and favouring one of her back legs over the other. My mum looked her over and found no visible injuries other than a small scab on her ear. She did, however, find a long scar on Mia’s weaker leg. My mum made an appointment for the vets the next day while Mia settled down on Felicity (a sheep toy in my mum’s room that her cats love).
16/04/2024:
My mum took Mia to the vets to get her checked out. The vet gave her a once over and ending up coming to a bit of an odd conclusion. The vet concluded, based on the extreme weight loss (from 4.5kg to 2.3kg), lethargy, dehydration, and weakness that Mia likely had kidney problems and needed some blood tests to see what her kidney function was like.
Now, that would be a pretty reasonable conclusion (especially since he brother had kidney issues)…if she hadn’t been missing for over 5 weeks. The vet seemed to ignore that fact, despite her having been on their missing cat register and my mum telling them, during the appointment, that she had been missing. My mum, understandably, declined the blood tests and was not very happy with that particular vet.
She took Mia home and started giving Mia food little and often. Luckily, my mum works from home most of the time, so she was able to look after her almost around the clock.
Mia’s sister, Misha, was not very happy that Mia was back. Every time she saw Mia, she spit, hissed, and swiped at her. Mia would just let her do it and not react.
To be fair to Misha, I can understand why that would be her reaction. For the first 2 weeks of Mia’s disappearance, Misha would not stop calling for her. My mum described her howling. She also became very clingy towards my mum – following around the house everywhere she went and waiting by windows and doors for my mum to come home when she went out. In Misha’s eyes, Mia was dead and never coming back. She spent weeks mourning her, only for her to come back and be the centre of attention.
24/04/2024:
As the days went on, Mia gradually managed to get some of her strength back and starting acting a bit more like herself again. This was the first time that she had had enough strength to jump up onto the bed and have cuddles with my mum. Look how happy she is with herself!
27/04/2024:
While they were still, very much, not friends – Misha and Mia were able to sit in the same room together…quite far apart, mind you, but without violence. At this point, Mia has still yet to react to any of Misha’s swearing or swiping.
Later that same day, Mia decided to join Misha and my mum upstairs while mum was doing nails. She sat down near Misha, Misha gave her a good sniff, and then she slapped her. My mum managed to snap a picture as she was giving Mia a sniff.
29/04/2024:
The girls were starting to get closer again and my mum caught them sleeping near each other. Misha was still being quite nasty to Mia (when awake) and Mia was continuing to let her just get it all out of her system. Misha was still not quite used to having her sister back but, I think, she was starting to realise just how much she’d missed her.
04/05/2024:
Again, they are chilling on the same bed, and Mia is very happy and relaxed. You can see, in this pic particularly, how much weight she has put back on and how much more silky her coat has gotten.
My mum also sent me a picture of the scar on her leg. It stretches from her knee right down to her toe. We suspect that it’s the reason that she went missing in the first place – that she got her leg trapped/caught somewhere, ripped it free, and the got disoriented and couldn’t make it home again. It would make sense, since it was fully healed over by the time she was found and she’s never had the best sense of direction…but we’ll never truely know. It’s a miracle that it never got infected and ended up healing on its own when she was stuck outside for 5+ weeks. She is one very lucky cat.
06/05/2024:
They were finally friends again! They had started sleeping together again and were, for the most part, civil. Misha was still being a little bit more bitchy than normal and Mia was still letting her. By this point, Mia had also gained a lot of her strength back in her weaker leg and was pretty much using it as normal again.
18/05/2024:
Mia had finally had enough of Misha’s bitchiness towards her and decided to reassert her position as top cat. When chilling on my mum’s bed, Misha (out of nowhere) decided to swipe at Mia. Instead of swiping back, Mia decided to simply reverse and sit on Misha’s paws so that she couldn’t do it again. The status quo was fully restored.
25/05/2024:
Just another happy cat picture. You can see just how much better she looks compared to when she first came home.
01/06/2024:
In my mum’s house, there is a phenomenon known as ‘being double catted’. This is where 2 cats decide that they want you lap at the same time and you end up with 2 cats on your lap. This was the first time, since Mia went missing, that my mum got double catted.
Some more cat pictures (after 01/06/2024):
So, that’s about it. Mia’s been back home for a while now and has recovered really well. She still weighs a little bit less than what she used to, but that’s not a bad thing really as she was starting to get a little bit chunky before she went missing. Her leg is also back to normal and all the fur’s grown back in now too; you’d never know that she did anything to it.
She has changed a bit in herself, though. She’s still the same Mia, but now she goes out even less than before (pretty much only when mum is out there) and tends to stick to the garden. Her eating habits have also changed – going from grazing throughout the day to eating everything all at once. This whole thing has definitely affected her more than just physically, but she knows she’s safe being back with my mum and her, always slightly mardy, sister.
– Natalie
Right, time for an album. It’s not a particularly inspired choice this time; it’s just the album that I’m listening to at the moment – Spirituality and Distortion – Igorrr
Natalie's notebook 