It’s been a long time – five years, to be exact – but Mimi, a green-eyed tabby cat who went missing in 2020, has come home at last.
The tail, er, tale, began in August when the cat appeared at a venue that might seem counterintuitive, given the traditional animosity between felines and canines: Aardvarks Adventureland, a dog boarding and spa facility on Walnut Avenue in Mare Island.
“She first showed up as a stray cat on the island. Overnight staff would sometimes see her at night and reported it back to the a.m. crew,” said Day Lopez, a manager at Aardvarks.
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In defiance of the dominant dog vs. cat paradigm, the overnight staff took a liking to her and brought a kennel outside for her to sleep in and started leaving food as well.
Inch by inch, step by step, the seemingly feral creature began to trust the folks at Aardvarks, one day actually speaking with Lopez (well, in a manner of speaking) when she reported for work at 6 a.m. The cat was lying up against the front door as Lopez arrived.
“I opened the door and she let me interact with her” Lopez said. “For the whole day she stayed outside in the front yard area and slept most of the time.
“Since she had been hanging around for a few weeks at this point we finally decided, as a collective, to name her Catdog,” Lopez said. The staff had her chip read, but attempts to reach the owner failed, Lopez said.
Mimi the lost tabby cat, who disappeared for five years, is shown in this photograph. (Courtesy of Aardvarks Adventures, a Vallejo dog boarding facility.)
As the months passed, Catdog became more and more trusting, eventually becoming the house cat and sleeping in the window. The staff made sure Catdog got the medical care she needed, such as deworming, Lopez said.
While Catdog loved her human companions and their human customers and there were no hostile exchanges with the canines, finally the difficult day arrived.
“We made the hard choice, a few weeks ago, of taking her to the Humane Society so she can live a better life where she doesn’t have to be around dogs all the time,” Lopez said.
Catdog arrived at the Humane Society of the North Bay Feb. 18.
“Once the cat came in, we did an intake and scanned the microchip,” said Mei Wang, a volunteer and board member at the society. “They found the information and contacted the owner, who came forward and said, ‘That’s my cat.’” Wang said.
They learned that the animal’s real name was Mimi and she had been missing for five years.
She added, “If you find a lost dog or cat, bring it to a vet or shelter near you. If it has a microchip, they can read it with a scanner” and get the owner’s contact information, and there’s no fee.
For those who aren’t allowed to have pets or can’t bear the expense, Wang notes that the shelter is always looking for volunteers. Wang plays with the dogs, takes them for walks and enjoys their company as part of her volunteer service.
Meow-while, or rather, meanwhile, the lost cat’s owner, a Vallejo resident, has whisked (or should that be whiskered?) Mimi home at last in a joyous reunion – a fitting end to the cat-astrophe.
