celticdragonfly

Well, that was scary.

I drove back up the driveway this morning, after dropping Brendan off at school, and all the way back on the wall between our parking area and the neighbor's backyard, was a white and orange cat. Thought "boy, that one looks a LOT like Pixel." Then realized "oh $&^*, that IS Pixel."

Pixel is NOT supposed to be an outside cat. None of them are outside cats. And Pixel is my frail 14 year old who just had most of his teeth removed and is beginning to have kidney troubles, and has perpetual troubles with his right eye.

Parked the van, got out. (Thank GOODNESS that Maggie had slept in this morning, so she wasn't in the car with me. Started slowly walking towards him and talking gently. He took off behind the garage. Followed him around slowly, thank goodness he didn't go though the gap into the neighbor's property. Spent a chunk of time slowly working on getting closer to him, not spooking him (much), and talking to him, until he held still, yowled at me in weird voices, and finally let me pick him up.

Once I got him inside, and got Karl's attention, cleaned him up a bit, checked for any injuries (clearly broke a claw, but looks like that's it), and we fed him a bowl of chicken baby food. He went off to nap after inhaling it.

Best guess is that he got out last night - Karl was fiddling with the washing machine, trying to see if he could get it working again (since I can't get a service call out until Friday afternoon), and at one point had it draining out the back door, with the hose propping the screen door. Generally if you're moving heavy things around, cats are nowhere to be found. But Pixel must have investigated and slipped out, then couldn't get back in. Poor old man. I'm glad he's okay.