We adopted our cat KitKat when she was five years old. My husband brought her home from the shelter in her brand new carrying case, and she peered back at me from within the case with her yellow eyes. When she timidly emerged from the case, my two kids couldn’t wait to run their sticky little fingers over her soft black fur.
Six hours later, she had vanished without a trace.
We had spent the last six months working up to KitKat’s adoption. She was our first pet, and we were all almost levitating with excitement. We picked her out of the shelter because she ate treats out of our hands without biting our fingers. Black cats apparently have a harder time getting adopted, which I totally don’t understand because they show dirt less easily.
In order to be approved for adopting a cat, we had to sign a stack of paperwork. I had to provide two personal references that would presumably reassure the shelter that I did not have any books in my bookcase titled “To Serve Cats.” We purchased bags of kitty litter, the finest cat food our local supermarket had to offer, a contraption aptly called a “cat tree,” and a bed that was only slightly nicer than the beds my children slept in.
And now our cat was gone.
My kids were devastated. When my daughter went to preschool and they asked her what she did over the weekend, she told them tearfully, “We got a cat but she ran away.” But moreover, we were baffled. Where did the cat go? We were sure all the doors to the outside were closed.
So we embarked on a search for our new cat. We looked under all the sheets and blankets, under the sofa, and under the beds because my husband claimed cats like to hide there. We were scared to do the laundry because, omg, what if she’s nestled inside the washer or the dryer? We checked the toilets to see if she had fallen into one of them while trying to drink from the bowl, because we literally knew nothing about cats.
But after 24 hours of searching, KitKat was still not to be found.
We had to face the possibility that she had escaped our house. After all those papers pledging to take the best care of her, we had managed to lose track of her within 24 hours. I felt terrible. But why would she run away from us? Was her cat bed not soft enough? Did her cat food have the wrong turkey to salmon ratio? Was she mad at us for naming her after a chocolate bar that didn’t even have caramel in it? We didn’t even have photographs of her yet to post all over town.
But my husband pointed out that the can of cat food we put out for her the night before had been eaten. So either she was still in the house, or else we had to face the terrifying possibility that our children were eating cat food. Unable to face the latter, we decided she had to be in the house.
My husband pointed out this tiny little hole in the panels under our kitchen counter. The hole was roughly the size of the palm of my hand. When we tried to look inside, it was completely dark. “Maybe she went in there?” he suggested.
I ruled it out immediately. “No way,” I said. “It’s too small.”
But my husband insisted it was possible, so he got out his tool kit—a momentous occasion that happens roughly twice a year—and began to remove one of the panels from under the kitchen counter. After he got it free, we saw a pair of yellow eyes staring back at us.
And this was a moment I will never, ever forget. Because it marks one of only like three times ever that my husband was right and I was wrong.
After being rescued from the hole under our kitchen counter, KitKat became one of the most important members of our family. She flourished in our family and gained 70% of her body weight within two months. I don’t know what we would do without her licking our plates after every meal, stalking me whenever I eat eggs, and nuzzling me to get onto my lap, especially whenever I’m holding the iPad for some reason. And thanks to her, black cats have graced the pages (and even saved the day!) in several of my novels.
Love you, KitKat! I’m glad you didn’t run away!
#1 Amazon bestselling author Freida McFadden is a practicing physician specializing in brain injury who has penned multiple Kindle bestselling psychological thrillers and medical humor novels. She lives with her family and black cat in a centuries-old three-story home overlooking the ocean, with staircases that creak and moan with each step, and nobody could hear you if you scream. Unless you scream really loudly, maybe.
To hear Freida talk more about herself in the third person, visit her website: https://www.freidamcfadden.com
