I am Pleased to Announce:

[in_the_blue]

Our wayfaring cat has been returned to us, safe and sound.

Just yesterday I was having the hardest time grasping that Cap'n Jack might be gone. I've expected to see him pop out from under a shrub or from behind a chair or from up a tree for a month now. And I had this huge grief over him that I couldn't let go of, because we never knew what happened. With Stones, that was so very final; I held him in my arms as the doctor euthanized him and that grief, although incredibly huge, had an end to it.

This didn't. And now I know why.

The people who found him have had him and been feeding and sheltering him for about a week, maybe a little more (he's still not telling me where he was the other 3 weeks). They were so nice and unlike the other people who've seen a grey cat and I had to go and wonder whether or not it might be him, I knew this was Jack the moment I saw him.

He hated all four minutes of the car ride home, by the way. That's my boy.