Nine Lives

I am not a huge pet person. I'm even less so now that I have kids. But even more than I'm not a pet person, I'm especially not a cat person. If you know me, you know that we have a cat. Before you start feeling sorry for our cat because I'm not a feline lover, know that Jim loves all animals and Avery loves Rogue enough for the rest of us. Aidan and I can take or leave her. No, we don't want anything bad to happen to her and we would never hurt her ... purposefully (Aidan was 2 when we got her and he used to "love" on her by picking her up by the neck.)
Rogue (our boys named her after an X-Men character) came to live with us a little over two years ago. For a while she was an inside cat- until she scratched up the leather furniture and chose to pee on the carpet rather than in her litter box. She then became an in the garage, let her out to run around during the day, come in the house occasionally kitty. Several months ago, she ran away. She was gone for three weeks. Avery was devastated. He drew pictures and put signs up all around. Just about the time we were thinking she was not coming back, right about the time I was getting ready to put the litter box out for the trash men, our neighbor calls and says she thinks she found Rogue. And it was her. She had been living under this abandoned house not far from us. We didn't know if she really couldn't find her way back or if she had tried and been scared by the traffic to cross the road (it was in a high volume area.) Jim took the kitty carrier to the old house and lured her in with some food.
Fast forward to last Thursday. I was heading to lunch with a friend. It was a beautiful, warm day so I opened the garage door to let Rogue out to play. That evening our neighbor across the street called and asked if we were missing a cat. Come to think of it I told him- I hadn't seen her since I got back home. He starts to apologize saying he's sorry for the boys. Apparently Rogue had crawled in the motor part of their Sequoia. His sister in law had started the car, heard a meow, and opened the hood to find our cat. He said someone had to help get it out. So, in my mind (even though now as I remember the conversation he never actually said what happened) I'm seeing Rogue getting caught in the fan of the motor and well, your imagination can take it from there.
I called Jim in from outside and we debated on whether we should tell the boys she was dead or just let them think she had run away. We decided it would be better for Avery not to hold out hope that she was coming back and for us not to have to make and hang hundreds of signs around town all in vain. So we told the boys and both of them were very upset.
Later that night our neighbor's wife calls. She had talked with her sister and we had the story all wrong. Rogue did climb in to the engine. Our neighbor's sister in law drove the truck all the way from their house to North Nashville (about 20-30 minutes away) heard a meow, pulled over, opened the hood and out jumped Rogue. Scared our neighbor's poor sister in law to death. So, Rogue is very much alive somewhere in North Nashville. It helped Avery to know that she wasn't dead. Each night we've prayed for her to have food and shelter and to either make it back home to us or find a loving home (I'm hoping for the latter of these two.) As for the litter box and cat toys, well I'm not carting them to the curb any time soon. If any cat could make its way back its Rogue. :)