Sunday, January 28, 2007

Missing... and found!

Scooby gave us all a bit of a scare on Friday after he went missing. To understand why it was such an ordeal it's best if I tell you abit about Scooby's character. When I am at home he stays in most of the time sleeping. If he goes out he usually spends at the most of an hour out before coming back. he's in and out usually all day. Scooby never misses a meal. That is why at midday on Fridat without seeing Scooby since he went out in the morning I was a bit worried. Brushing aside my anxieties as over-protectiveness the hours passed and I did nothing. When my parents returned they were surprised of his absence but told me he had probably just found somewhere to sleep that was warm, perhaps his friends, Beryl and Alan's house. An hour later my mind couldn't rest so I went round to see if he was there. They hadn't seen him all day, which to them was surprising because he usually visited half a dozen times! I panicked. It wasn't like Scooby at all. Morgan too seemed worried in his own way. He wouldn't settle down and kept popping out.

We really started to panic when it got dark though. It was most unlike Scooby. We walked round the streets calling his name and again, at the sound of his name Scooby usually appears galloping across the grass anticipating a cuddle - or food. We decided that an explanation was he was accidentally shut in a garage so we, including Morgan, went to the neighbours asking if they had seen him (Morgan offered to look round their house - or was he just being nosy?) and politely asked for them to look in their sheds.

It was still early days, he had only been missing for 12 hours, but the bad thoughts sneak into your minds uninvited. Thankfully, when at the RSPCA, Scooby (as is Morgan) was microchipped. These microchips are tiny, like a grain of rice, and are painlessly placed under the animals skin with a unique number. When a cat or or other animal is admitted to an animal centre they are always scanned for a microchip whereby the details of the animals "owners" are placed on a database so if found can be contacted and reunited. It gave us some reassurance that if he had become disorientated or injured we could be identified as his family. This was one of the fears we had for him.

At 9 we went for a last trawl round the streets willing him to come out from wherever he was. We would never ever have given up on Scooby however we placated ourseleves with the fact there was little more we could do tonight to find him and faced a night without him.At 9.30 who should walk through the door but Scooby. I can say that I’ve never been so glad to see him before in my life. We are not sure what happened to him but presume he got shut somewhere, which does happen and we are not bitter towards the person who did it as we know well of the curiosity of cats and (unlike people) their delicate, if not sly, way of doing things. Ourselves have gone out to see Morgan's paw coming under the locked door of the garage. It was quite traumatic for everyone but I think it was for Scooby. He wouldn’t go out hardly yesterday and today - even less than usual. We don’t know what happened to him (and he's refusing to talk about it) but we are presuming that he got shut up somewhere.

Thanks to God that he is back, that's all we can say.