The Unpack

Moving house is most inconvenient. Nothing is where it should be when you need it. All week the same scenario has played out on repeat. For example: I’ll go to hang out the washing then realise the pegs are still somewhere in the garage where we dumped everything. I’ll walk down two flights of stairs to the garage and, whilst searching, unearth something else I realise is needed up above. After having walked back upstairs and placing said item where it should go I’ll return to hanging out the washing only to realise I’ve forgotten the pegs.

Slowly but surely things are getting placed where they should be and the pile in the garage is shrinking.

But in amongst all the unpacking, the warm glow of home-making merriment was dampened by the fact a key member of our family did not come with us.

Our cat of ten years, Trixie, disappeared the day we moved. Although I’d half-jokingly tried to throw our problematic stray cat, Jesse, in as a freebie to several customers during our yard sale the weekend previous, he happily jumped in the car, made himself right at home on the window seat of the new abode and has been on his best behaviour since.

But half an hour before we left last Friday, Trixie was nowhere to be seen. Having looked forward to not travelling across town every day, instead we’ve made the hour-round journey back daily to search. I deposited flyers in letterboxes, door-knocked, stopped strangers on the street, played detective tracking down people’s phone numbers but it seemed Trixie had gone truly AWOL.

The new owners had spotted her several times over the weekend so I borrowed a cat trap from the SPCA and phoned the neighbours to lock their wayward cat indoors but it turned up nothing – not even a possum.

Deciding to try one last time, on Wednesday night, like all the others, I lay awake fretting. As the rain lashed around outside I tried not to think of my beloved cat out there starving and bedraggled wondering why we’d upped and abandoned her and moved a dog into what was her home.

The next morning I checked my phone with bated breath. It was good news – they had our cat!

I’ve never got ready so fast in the morning in my life. We raced out there and were reunited with our slimmed down, but otherwise healthy-looking cat.

Trixie proceeded to tell us her story of the last six days all the way to her new home, which she thoroughly checked out before coming to rest in her favourite posi – Jayla’s pillow.

She hasn’t stopped purring since.

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