Ali Cat

There are many things you don't want to see when driving through your neighborhood, but high on that list is a cat that has been hit by a car. Even higher on that list is a cat that looks like YOUR cat lying in the road after being hit by a car.

Yeah, so that happened. Spoiler alert: Apparently Ali Cat has a twin.

So this morning as I was running a quick errand, a striped gray cat that looked EXACTLY like Ali was lying at the side of the road. The worst had already come to pass, but it left me with a very big dilemma - had Ali gotten out of the house? I know grey-striped cats aren't all that rare, but add a patch of white on the chest and the general small size thing and truly it could have been Ali. But confirming that it wasn't Ali?

HOOBOY.

One does not find Ali Cat. Ali Cat decides if she's going to be seen. I -literally- go months without seeing her because she's scared of everything. Every once in a while she'll find me so that I can show her where to find her food (... she forgets? I think?), but mostly she simply exists within the confines of this house. Somewhere. I've never seen her even think about approaching a door, but there's a first time for everything and it's entirely possible for her to get spooked and decide one scary outcome might be better than another.

Anyway, I spent the whole damn day trying to set eyes on that cat because I genuinely did not know if it was her at the side of the road or not. I searched all over the basement, every closet ... basically there wasn't a single inch of the house that went unsearched.

Just as I was about to resign myself to going weeks or even months without knowing whether we have two cats or three, I found Ali. Or, rather, she found me. I went to throw a sweatshirt up on a high shelf in my closet when I discovered exactly where the cat apparently had been hiding all day. As I tossed the sweatshirt up in the air, I startled her and she came FLYING DOWN FROM A SHELF WAY ABOVE MY HEAD DIRECTLY AT MY FACE OMG.

We both survived that absolutely horrifying moment, but just barely.

But at least I know she's alive? For now?