The saga of the ghost kitty

Lord knows, I hope I haven't snatched away a non-lost cat.

I don't think I have. But it's possible.

Regular readers might recall that, on Dec. 7, I posted about the "ghost kitty" who had started to hang out in the neighborhood. She's a beautiful cat, obviously tame and loving. But nobody on my block admitted to knowing who she was or to whom she belonged. Several of the neighbors said they had taken pity on her and fed her.

She seemed to like to sit on my deck or lounge in the back yard in the sunlight. She would come up to me whenever I went out on the deck and rub against my legs, wordlessly asking to be loved. She would let me pick her up and hold her without struggling. She purred loudly.

This went on for some weeks, during which time it became clear that she was slowly losing weight.

On Christmas Eve day, after much thought, I gave her a small cat-bowl of dry food and a small bowl of water. Was it the season that led me to feed her? Perhaps.

Over the course of the next half hour, she ate a full bowl of food -- more than my cat, Cassie, eats in three days -- and she drank half of the bowl of water.

I lined a cardboard box with a towel, cut a small door in the box, and put it on the deck. There were traces of cat fur in it on Christmas morning, so I suspect she used it as a bed for at least a portion of the night.

On Christmas day, I again put out a full bowl of cat food and filled the water dish. The ghost kitty came running. She again ate a full bowl of food and drank half the water.

We have a fairly elaborate e-mail tree in our neighborhood, so I sent out a message on Christmas afternoon, along with the picture you see above, asking if anybody knew this cat or where she might live. One of the recipients posted the message and the picture to a Yahoo! group devoted to lost pets on Richmond's Northside.

On the day after Christmas, I again fed the ghost kitty and gave her fresh water. She ate and drank well, but she didn't finish her bowl of food. Perhaps she was feeling less of a need to stuff herself.

Then the e-mail responses to my lost-cat notice began to pour in. There was lots of good advice. And there were two people who actually wanted to do something. I couldn't bring the ghost kitty into my house because Cassie has a chronic upper-respirator infection, and my vet and the specialist vets who diagnosed Cassie advised me that she was both potentially contagious to other cats and more susceptible to infections that don't seriously bother other cats.

Last evening I petted the ghost kitty for a while, mostly to say goodbye, then put her in my carrier. Twenty minutes later, Jennifer, one of those who volunteered to help, came by to pick her up and give her a warm home for the night. Acting on instructions given to us by a representative of Richmond's Cat Adoption and Rescue Effort, Jennifer dropped the ghost kitty off at a local vet, where she was examined, scanned to see if she had a microchip, tested for several cat diseases and given a few standard vaccinations.

As of right now, the beautiful and sweet ghost kitty is in the hands of a CARE volunteer and will be safely looked after until a home for her can be found.

The ghost kitty now has a new name, Daisy, given to her by the CARE volunteer.

My thanks go to the selfless people who decided to act when they got word that there was a cat who needed care.

And I wish Daisy much love as she begins a new adventure.

A friend of mine calls this group rescue effort a tiny Christmas miracle.

Perhaps it was.