Oscar is Lost

French village cats are tough customers.  Street wise and sly, crafty and confident they slink and swagger about the streets as if they own them - which they do, to a large extent. They have learned to fend for themselves, fight with dogs, avoid traffic and feed themselves from wheelie bins. They seem mostly to be unsterilised and intact, producing  a couple of litters a year at least.  

Oscar, on the other hand, is a well behaved, nicely brought up cat unaccustomed to life in the gutter.  Inexperienced, apart from a couple of run-ins with the neighbours' cat in Australia, we felt he was ill equipped to deal with the pugilistic lifestyle second nature to the alley cats of the Med, and decided to keep him in the house.  He seemed fine with it and disinterested in outdoors.

 

This was going well until one night when we returned home a bit late from dinner at neighbours Danny and Russell's house, and full of curry and VRAC, failed to notice Oscar had slipped out of the house as we were locking up.  Off to bed we went.

 

Early in the morning, I woke suddenly and realised Oscar was not in his usual morning position i.e. on my chest loudly purring the 'get up and feed me, slacker' purr.  Where was he?  A search of the house revealed he was not home.  Alex joined me in a second search and it slowly dawned on us that he must have sneaked out last night and been locked out all night.  With all those French alley cats.

 

We rushed out and frantically started to look for him.  We combed the streets all morning, feeling sicker by the minute. What if he'd been run over? What if he'd been stolen? We had been warned he was 'trop beau' and would be a prize trophy.  What if he were trapped somewhere where nobody could hear his cries?  What if, what if..  We tried to think 'he's a cat, he'll turn up' but didn't manage at all well.

 

We thought surely Roly and Pepper would find him. They set off all alert and determined - definitely on the trail of something - and lead us straight to a left over pizza dropped in Place Charles de Gaulle.  They were immediately relegated home.  

We bumped into Louis, the local policeman - Pomerols has just the one.  He was very kind and said he'd do an announcement from the Mairie PA, which he did, requesting news of a 'gros chat blanc' - 'gros' is big in French, not fat, though Oscar fits both descriptions.  This made us feel sad, not hopeful, however.

We made some Lost (Perdu) posters, which was awful as I hate to see them in the streets and always wonder where the poor pet is and how the poor owners are feeling, and of course dreaded having to resort to a Lost poster myself. We knocked on doors, asked around and continued to patrol the village. 

 

The village children quickly found out Oscar was missing and embraced the hunt with boundless enthousiasm, especially Gabriel (age 8) who probably reads a great deal of Tin Tin or the French equivalent of Secret Seven or Famous Five and decided he was going to find a trail of white fur and track Oscar down this way.  He requested his own copy of the Lost poster and gathered a band of acolytes who set off for the search on assorted bikes and scooters.

It got dark and then it got darker. No sign of Oscar.  We thought about going to bed and leaving the front door ajar in case Oscar found his way miraculously home.  We realised we wouldn't be able to sleep too well, so set of for one final search with a torch and a tin of Whiskas.  It was around midnight, and we bumped into Danny and Russell who told us they could hear a cat mewing near the Mairie.  We conducted a thorough search, to no avail.  Miserable, I wandered off down a side street shining my torch under cars and gates.  And then suddenly, there was Oscar!  Huddled in a recess in a wall to a garden - we had looked there a dozen times that day.  He must have been hiding, too scared to come out during the day. I scooped him up and rushed him home. He was frightened and dirty but nothing else.  We had probably (almost certainly) been more bothered than him by his disappearence.  But he was glad to be home, and Roly and Pepper were delighted to see him.  We were never so grateful, and still are.

 

Early the next morning Gabriel was ringing the door bell to announce his latest scheme for finding Oscar, which seemed to involve trails of crumbs and secret chalk marks on buildings. We told him the good news. He seemed pleased but requested proof - so we booked Oscar in for an official appearance in front of the search party, which would be accompanied by cup cakes for all.

Several hours and dozens of cup cakes later, everyone was happy.  Especially Gabriel who had collected white fur, a Lost poster, a band of followers and a reputation as village sleuth.  How was he going to occupy his days now, though?  He rang the door bell a bit later to let me know he'd be happy to show me how to improve my cup cakes.....