I interviewed a veterinarian earlier this week for a story I was writing.

 

She told me stories about some of the many cats and dogs she had over the years, and it got me thinking about a few pets I had over the years.

 

The one that stands out the most was a cat - Whitey.

 

My late wife Julie found Whitey a few days before I met her in 1986. She told me he must have been just born, and was curled up near some trash cans in someone’s front gate.

 

With lots of care, Whitey survived and grew into a huge Tomcat. He was very friendly and liked to sit on my lap. That cased some problems if I was wearing black pants because it would take awhile to brush off all the white hair he left behind.

 

Since we lived in an apartment on a busy street in Jersey City, Whitey never had a chance to go outside. His closest encounter with nature was sitting on the kitchen window sill and looking out at the birds that landed on the fire escape.

 

After Julie’s mother died, we decided to come to the farm outside Monticello in the fall of 1997 to work on some of the old farm buildings - with the idea of eventually moving here.

 

We packed up the cats (we had three at the time) and drove here from New Jersey.

 

When we arrived, we let the cats loose in the big old farmhouse to let them get used to their new surroundings. A few days later,we opened the porch door and allowed them to go outside.

 

They were a little afraid at the beginning, since they weren’t used to the outdoors. But they gradually looked forward to sitting just outside the house, getting some sun. 

 

I was busy re-roofing the 30’ x 50’ machine shed every day by myself. That was the year the straight line winds damaged hundreds of homes in the area, and there were no roofers to do the job.

 

One evening when we sat down for dinner, we realized neither of us had seen Whitey for hours. We usually made sure the cats were in before dark because of all the coyotes and other animals in the area.  

 

But we couldn’t find Whitey.

 

We searched the house and all the buildings. We walked into the cornfields surrounding the house calling out his name. We put a sign on the mailbox and went to the neighbors’ house and told them to be on the lookout for a big white cat. But after a few days there were still no signs of Whitey. 

 

As the days and weeks passed, we were almost sure Whitey was hopelessly lost or had been a victim of one of the coyotes. We knew he had no experience surviving on his own in the wild.

 

As the weather turned colder, we decided we’d be driving back to New Jersey for the winter after I finished the roof.

 

A week before Thanksgiving, we started packing the car one evening for our trip the next morning. We were sad we had lost Whitey and we knew even if he was still alive, he’d never survive the winter in Minnesota.

 

The next morning, as I checked all the buildings to make sure they were closed up for the winter, I saw some movement at the edge of the corn field.

 

It was Whitey!

 

He was walking slowly towards me - as thin as I’d ever seen him.

 

He’d been gone for at least three weeks and had some scars on his face and back from some encounter with another animal. But he was alive. I guess his size had helped him fight off his attacker.

 

We took him in the house, fed him and let him sleep while we decided what to do next.

 

We delayed our trip for a few days until we felt he was ready for two days in the car.

 

He seemed relieved to be back home in the apartment, and he never showed any ill effects from his three-week survival journey.

 

After we finally moved to the farm in 2000, we still let Whitey outside, but he never strayed far from sight.

 

Whitey died in 2008 at the age of 22.