Sophia's story

A few months ago, when I was walking Lizzy on a warm, early fall day, she and I came across this very friendly cat, who followed us, meowing, for almost the entire one-mile of our walk. I prayed that the cat wasn't another abandoned animal who would come home with us since we had only recently adopted Hamlet and one more animal was simply out of the question. The cat veered off into a deer trail and I didn't see her again.

A few days ago, my husband mentioned that he'd seen her (I had given my husband a detailed description of the kitty) and he conjectured that she belonged to some neighbors because she was walking down their driveway. I was very relieved to think so.

We were wrong.

Early Thursday, after a pretty impressive windstorm Wednesday night, and after the first significant snowfall of the season, I went to walk Lizzy on the trails covered by untrodden snow when we both noticed the distinct, small cat paw prints. They were the only mark on the snow in those parts that early in the morning and I began to suspect that they belonged to the same cat I had met a few months' back. This confirmed my original suspicion that someone had abandoned her to her luck because no one in their right mind would allow even their outside pets to roam in 5-above-zero windchill.

As soon as we climbed up back onto the road, there was the cat, with its tail half frozen and, again, desperate for affection and warmth. She followed us home up the road with Lizzy trying to get her to play and sitting on her, which is Lizzy's (not very successful) way of making friends with cats. I called my husband who feared Lizzy and I had run into some trouble on the snowy trails and he came out to help.

We brought her into the garage where we set out water and food. The cat, whom my husband christened Sophia (because of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, one of the authors in my dissertation), was so hungry that she gobbled up every morsel she was given like she hadn't had a meal in days. From the garage we moved her to the basement where she would be more comfortable and Sophia proved to be most affectionate cat we've ever met (a clear sign that she had been socialized with people and other animals).

Still, we decided we'd make the effort to see if she belonged to someone around here instead of what we feared: that she'd been dumped at the trail site. My husband took the photo above and prepared a flier that we distributed throughout our road, hoping someone would call us to claim her. Nothing happened.

I decided to take her to the vet today because cats can have very dangerous diseases that are contagious to other cats, and she had been sneezing when we first got her, which could signal an upper respiratory infection or something worse. During my lunch hour, my husband put her in the cat kennel and I took her to the vet, expecting another $400 bill (like Hamlet's).

An hour later, the vet called to say that Sophia was essentially very healthy, not spayed, and only a little emaciated by her adventures on the trails. He asked whether we wanted to keep her and I assured him that we would love to give her to a good home. He said he had someone in mind and he would let me know.

Before another hour went by, one of the veterinary technicians whom we know, because she took her dog to the same obedience teacher whose class Lizzy failed, called and asked if she could keep Sophia for the weekend because she was looking for a cat just like this one, so wonderfully affectionate and easy going. If Sophia gets along with the woman's other dogs and cats, she might just have found her forever home and, ironically, only a few miles up the same road where she was so cruelly left to fend for herself.

Here's to hoping Sophia is a star kitty and earns a loving home this weekend. That's the kind of happy ending that not even Disney can beat. As for us, while there is a little sadness in seeing Sophia go because she was so friendly and cute, we will be both thrilled and very, very relieved.