??????

This post will remain untitled until I can think of a title that does it justice. If you would like to add your suggestions in your comments, please feel free.

You all remember Shadow. He's the stray cat that adopted us last October, was run over (by me), and returned again. That alone should demonstrate his loyalty to our family, right? Well, a few weeks ago, he wasn't in his bed at bed time, so I left the garage door open a crack so he could return. That night at 4am, I heard meowing outside so I went to see if he was hurt. I saw Shadow with a little cat friend in our front yard. When they saw me, they both darted away. In the morning, Shadow was back. The next week, (last week) he disappeared for three days. I wondered if maybe he had been using us for our warm garage in the cold months and now he was moving on. We also thought that he was probably out "cattin' around" (as Darin puts it), and thought that if he did come back we should do the responsible thing and get him neutered to help control the pet population. He did return and that very day I called the Vet to make an appointment for him to be neutered. Yesterday was the day of the appointment. Darin dropped him off, and they said they would leave a message on my cell phone when he could be picked up. I subbed in the morning, and checked my messages when I got home. This is what the message said:

"Hi, this is the Animal Clinic. We have Shadow here, and it looks like he has already been neutered....really recently....probably in the last week or so. You can come get him anytime."

HUH???

So apparently when we thought he was out living out his rebellious teenage years, he was really recovering from SURGERY! I asked the vet if he was sure it happened recently, and he assured me that it happened within the last week to week and a half.

My mind was trying to comprehend how in the world that happened. Here were my theories.

1) A stray van came around to neuter all the strays in the area.
**this theory was shot when the vet told me that if that happens, they clip the ear of the cat. Shadow's ear remains un-clipped.

2) Some person saw him with their female cat and didn't want him to get her pregnant.
**this theory was quickly thrown out the window when common sense dictated that it would be MUCH more cost effective for the owner of the female cat to get their cat spayed rather than neuter every male cat that came around.

3) Random act of kindness
**if this is the case, it is THE most RANDOM random act of kindness ever!

4) He is a cheater.
Either he belonged to someone else when he came to our house, and he's cheating on them or he has since been out looking for another family to spend his time with and is cheating on us. This can be the only plausible explanation, because someone obviously felt that they owned him enough to pay to have him neutered. The thing that baffles me, though, is that he is ALWAYS here. (I'm sure that's what all victims of infidelity say.) The detective in me really wants to know what's going on. When I ran him over in January, his collar came off and was broken, so when he returned we got him a new collar. He only wore it for a couple of days, then it was gone. I thought that maybe someone else had taken it off of him, but I found the collar yesterday afternoon under his bed. I put the collar on him yesterday, and he had it on last night when I went to bed. He wasn't back home last night, but he is here this morning...with no collar. It is possible that he managed to wiggle out of it again, but we can't be so sure. The next step is to get another collar and attach a message to it. Although it might be pointless. What are we going to do? Create a custody agreement with the other owners? The thing that makes me laugh is that there is probably another blog post somewhere out there stating someone else's shock that someone would put a collar on their cat. In any event, Shadow (or whatever his name is) is here and neutered--with no cost to me. So, other family, if you're out there somewhere: Thank you.