Today is Independence Day in the USA. Tina will be celebrating with her family but thankfully without the traditional turkey. For Orlando Cat the 4th July marks the end of her independence and the joyous return to the fold. Orlando disappeared the night I returned from Florida. She sat at the back door pleading to be let out, a request I refused as it was past 10pm. Thinking she’d retreated to the lounge I made one last paranoid check to see if the security gate across the door was locked and she shot out into the night. I expected her to return in half an hour as usual but she didn’t. She wasn’t there at the back door when I turned in for the night, and much to my surprise she wasn’t there in the morning either and the food I’d left out was untouched. On the few occasions she has stayed out all night Orlando would be waiting to berate me when I let her in at breakfast time.
But this time was different, she didn’t return. A poster and leafleting campaign ensued along with nightly tramping the streets calling her name and rattling a box of cat biscuits. Maybe she’d got into a tussle with another cat and got lost after being chased away from her territory. Whatever the reasons Orlando had been wandering freely for nine days when this afternoon I received a phone call to say a cat matching her description had been found and was happily eating tinned tuna at their house. I nipped out from work, rushed over on the Vespa, and was reunited with the escapee a few streets down from my own. The kind finder discovered Orlando under a hedge whilst searching for his daughter’s lost football. By chance one of the posters was strapped to a lamppost right opposite his back yard. Orlando is now safely back at my house, seemingly unperturbed and unharmed by her adventures, stretched out in the sunny attic purring contentedly. I’m glad, and to be honest surprised, to have her back after her few days of independence. A happy 4th July all round. 
