It’s never good when your doorbell rings at 7:30 am.

This morning, our neighbor found a cat stuck in our tree. After the cat got out safely, she went over to our front entry and started rubbing up against the bricks there, so our neighbor thought perhaps it was one of ours that had escaped. It was not, but seeing how friendly the cat was, Jason picked her up and brought her inside.

Meet Sunday, the sweetest little calico brown tabby ever. Of course, when we first brought her inside, we weren’t sure what we were dealing with. Was she a community cat that was friendly but could turn feral at any provocation? Was she someone’s lost pet? Was she an indoor/outdoor free-roaming pet that just happened to be at our house at that exact moment? I recognized her tail – she moves it in this double-curled way that is very distinctive – from an overnight video of a cat we took back in April. This cat had only appeared on camera the one time, but it reinforced the idea that this might be an indoor/outdoor pet or a friendly community cat.

Jason got the kitty some food and water, which she ignored completely. She was agitated, mostly staying by the window as if she longed to get back outside. The only sign of aggression, though, was a hiss at our cats under the door, and we blocked the crack so she wouldn’t be bothered by them. I tried to scan her for a microchip, but didn’t find anything, and I didn’t know if I was using the machine wrong or if she simply didn’t have one. Meanwhile, Jason called our vet, who told us to go ahead and bring her in to have her scanned there and checked for spay.

By 8:30, we were at the vet, who confirmed that Sunday had no microchip. However, she did have a spay scar and tattoo! But with no ear tip, and her being as friendly and clean as she was, we didn’t think she’d been TNRed. Which left Jason and me in a bit of a conundrum. Try to find her owner via social media? Leave out flyers and just keep Sunday in Jason’s room for now? Surrender her to the animal shelter since she was friendly and could be adopted out? Let her go so she could find her own way home, assuming she had a home?

We put her in Jason’s room temporarily, while I re-downloaded NextDoor and re-added the neighborhood facebook pages that I generally tend to stay away from. Then I began looking into surrender procedures in case my social media searches came up empty. Thankfully, though, my social media searches did not come up empty! The facebook post had been up less than ten minutes when a woman said this looked like her cat Sunday, an indoor/outdoor roaming cat who she confirmed was spayed but didn’t have a chip. She lived like a block away from my house, so her mama swung by to verify that this was indeed Sunday. To make a long story short with a happy ending, she was!

Sunday was so happy to be freed from confinement. The second I opened the cat carrier, her anxiety disappeared. She didn’t run the way feral cats often do, but instead began to roll in the grass and rub up against our legs. Sunday clearly knew her mama and was all over her, but also rubbed up against me to tell me she loved me too. (The cat seems to love indiscriminately!) Her mama and I talked for a bit and then she left, Sunday trotting alongside her happily.

Everything was wrapped up before 9:45. I called the vet to update them, and now we are done with today’s good deed! Soooo happy to reunite Sunday with her family, even if technically we could have just left her to her own devices and she would’ve found her own way home. Ha! We couldn’t know that, though, so I’m happy we did due diligence and got it all taken care of without uncertainties!