Otis on the Lam

Otis the cat went missing on October 25 and hasn’t been seen since. We miss him so and hope he comes back. He is a VIP (very important pet) in our lives. He isn’t our first cat, or our last, but he is one of the more memorable ones.

We found Otis almost 12 years ago at an adoption fair. While Dean and I argued the merits of two other cats, our son, little two-year-old Carter, was playing with this gray tabby cat through the slats in his cage. We were told Otis was previously adopted with a brother, but they returned Otis. I’m pretty sure they gave us a discounted price and ushered us out the door to be rid of that cat.

Otis was six months old at the time and 14 pounds. He drove us all crazy eating plants, knocking things off tables and trying to drink my water…..for the next 12 years. True to our first impressions, he loved kids. When we hosted play dates, he would run to the door to greet little two year old guests and their little brothers and sisters. Before Otis, I had not seen a cat so drawn to getting his tail pulled and eyes poked. I think he preferred children to adults, unless the adults were coffee drinkers.

Brewing coffee in our house was akin to brewing catnip. Otis would go bananas. His favorite snacks were tuna fish and coffee beans. He once broke into my mom’s suitcase while she was visiting and ate a hole in the bag of her coffee bean stash.

Otis was not to be ignored. He was a big cat who insisted on sitting on guests whether they wanted it or not. He wouldn’t sit in a proper, polite way, but that annoying cat way of walking back and forth while dragging a tail across the chair holder’s face. He would mess up my puzzles and knock everything off my desk while I was trying to work, then everything off my nightstand while I slept. He terrified the vet with an unnaturally vicious reaction to routine checkups, so much so, that I drugged him before getting shots.

It was the only time I heard him hiss. It was all he had the energy to do on the kitty Valium was to produce a long, silent hiss in protest to the manhandling at the vet.

Now Otis is gone. He disappeared from his foster home (my mom’s house) during a big move. The theories of where he went are running rampant, but the truth is that we don’t know where Otis has gone.

We only wish he would come back.