The stray
Every morning on her walk to work, Laura would come across a cat that was so clean that she always thought it must have an owner. Sometimes she would get close to try and pet it, but the look the cat gave her made her know she was not welcome. So it became her quest to befriend the cat. She would bring little bags of treats for the cat and sure enough, the cat became very friendly and started to warm up to her. After a few weeks of constant treats, the cat finally allowed Laura to pet him. Laura really started to look forward to her walk to work. She would have her treat in hand waiting to meet her new friend and feed him.
One day however, the cat was nowhere to be seen. Laura thought that maybe that morning, the cat must be at his owner’s house, so she put back the treat in her bag and thought she could use it the next day. The next morning came and still, the cat was not at the usual place. This time, Laura thought she could look in the surrounding areas hoping to spot her little friend and joyfully give him a treat. The cat was nowhere to be found. Laura wondered how she could find him, given that he had no collar with a name or an address or anything to tie him to a person. She worried about him, but she had to go to work. While at work, she tried to find out if there are any animal shelters in that area so that she could go look for her friend, whom she realised, she never got to name. She discovered one animal shelter, but it was a bit far and she wondered if she would have any luck there. She decided she would go after work.
She went to this animal shelter, and sure enough there were cats there that were up for adoption. She gave a good look at each of them, but none of the cats were friendly to her and none of them had the same pattern as her lost friend who was a black tuxedo cat. She wondered how she could find him, and wondered whether he got hurt or worse, killed. She could not bare to entertain the thought, so she became determined to find out what happened to him. Since he seemed healthy the last time she saw him, she was hopeful that nothing bad had happened. As the week ended, she became restless over the thought of him, and was looking forward to the weekend so that she could try and find him, with work out of the way.
On Saturday morning, she hurriedly ate breakfast and went out excited that she would have some luck at finding her lost furry friend. She went to the usual spot the cat would be and he wasn’t there. Her excitement faded away and her heart sunk. She was out of ideas on how to find him. She sat down on the ground right there on the side walk and took out the treat she had brought with her. She remembered the sweet cat she had managed to befriend and started to think she should forget about him. A person passing by threw some coins at her, thinking she was a beggar because of the sad look on her face. She took the coins and as she got up to go to a nearby shop to donate them, she saw a familiar little chubby furry body running to her. She immediately recognised him and before she could get up, he was all over her since he could smell the treats on her. She hugged him and gave him the treats. All this time she never realised the cat was on a leash and that a man was standing by holding the other end of the leash.
She nervously laughed and got up. The man was surprised at how friendly his cat was to this stranger, which was completely unlike him. Laura explained she had been feeding the cat on her way to work and she had become really attached to him. She explained how she had suddenly stopped seeing him and how she didn’t know how to find him without even knowing his name. She asked the man the name of his cat and it was Rom. The man explained how he had noticed that Rom had stopped eating his food, and he got worried that Rom could be sick, so he took him to the vet and was told to keep him indoors for a couple of days to see if he gets his appetite back. Little did he know that Rom was being fed by Laura all along. So when Laura explained it, he understood everything and was happy that there was no underlying cause for the change in Rom’s eating behaviour.
Laura and Rom’s owner, Rich, became friends since then because of their shared love for Rom. They later fell in love, got married and welcomed a baby girl into this world! And that was the story of how a cat brought together two people who never would have met had it not been for Rom.
