This morning, the cat escaped as The Man and The Boy left to go to Grammy’s.

He’s escaped before, but usually sticks close to the back deck, or just circles the house, allowing us to follow him.  Today, however, there was a rabbit involved, and the hunter in Raffi burst loose.  When the man went to retrieve him from the back ditch (between our lot and an overgrown field behind our house), Raffi actually hissed at him and bared his teeth.

Rather than risking a hand to the monster, The Man decided to drop The Boy off, and return to see if he could get him back inside.  But when he returned, Raffi was nowhere in sight.

He called me at work, and all the possible outcomes ran through my head, and remained in the back of my mind all day.  When I ran home after work to change, I looked all over the property, making smoochy noises, purring, and chirping as I went.  Nothing.

I started to think he was gone for good.

And I started to wonder what I was going to say to The Boy when he asked if Raffi had come back.

I prepared him as best I could, explaining that he may come back tonight, or sometime in the next few days, but that if he didn’t come back in about a week, he may be gone for good.  He processed this, and seemed ok, but when we got home and Raffi was still not around, he began a negative cycle, which was not going to end well.  How do you tell a kid to be patient when he is worried he’ll never see his cat again?

After about an hour of the pacing, the self-talk that started to get louder, including phrases like, “He’s NOT coming back,” I heard The Man’s truck pull in.

And then I heard a small kerfuffle, and The Man saying, “Open the door!” to The Boy, who was outside pacing the deck.

And Raffi was back.

Raffi was visibly tired after carousing the neighborhood, or ditches, or the neighboring golf course… who knows where he went (we are contemplating a go pro for his head in case he pulls this stunt again, because we are that curious).  The rest of us were incredibly relieved, and impressed he could find his way home. And The Boy was happy not to have been abandoned after all.