Percy's Day Off

He even made a cape the night before.

“Don’t be alarmed … but Percy got out of the yard."
Already, I felt alarmed. Anytime Percy escapes the yard, my blood runs colder. With a broken arm, I had no chance of catching him. So I had to hope he would find his way back and not into a dog-filled yard.

Despite one unexplained jump over the fence – which included me apologizing to a back-fence neighbor I didn’t know and scooping up an angry cat – Percy made no effort to leave the year. When a gate is left wide open, even the most sedentary cat will roam.

Theories exploded in my skull. Perhaps someone opened to gate to hold Percy for ransom (we wouldn’t pay and we wouldn’t have to, because the kidnappers would tire of him quickly). After a rash of break-ins, perhaps assailants merely dropped him off a few blocks away to lure us out hoping we might leave a door unlocked and grant them easy access to our valuables and wrapped presents. Perhaps in the zeal to see the outdoor cats the previous evening, Nancy’s nieces left the gate open. Maybe I left it open.

In any event, a seldom-opened gate was ajar, he was gone and not responding to my shouts or shaking of the treat bag. He never went more than a few feet into the front yard. With a fenced yard, he owned all the land he needed to stalk birds, mark his territory and romp.

Too tall for escape

The front yard still tantalized him. Whenever the gate opens and Percy patrols the backyard, he immediately sprints up. On earlier escape attempts, our neighbor’s urban mini-forest drew his attention first – he cut through the hedgerow to the low, leafy shrubs that sheltered many cats. Each time, I easily grabbed him.

Now he had the whole neighborhood open to him. Had he followed our feral mother cat across the street, where the thickets could mask any cat? We drove down the street below ours, hoping to glimpse him sniffing or chewing, his favorite outdoor activities. Nothing.

At our previous house, Percy would disappear for hours, turning up whenever hunger struck or the cold penetrated his coat. When he heard his name, he might pop out of bushes 10 feet from the house or flop out of a pickup tailgate 200 yards down the road. His last trip out of a fenced yard had come in October 2011, when a dogbite ended his outdoor days in East Nashville.

On his Donelson romp, he offered no clues to his path. He simple vanished, or slept peacefully in the bushes of our neighbor’s yard. Two hours later, Nancy ventured out. My arm prevented capturing Percy even if I encountered him, so I stayed put. Minutes later, she called - “I saw him.”

Rather that break for the thicket, Percy cut into the yards behind us. He traveled what I have dubbed the Clover Hill Catwalk, a tight space between a series of fences that only a cat could maneuver. For almost two years Percy had seen wild cats use the passage to enter and exit dog-filled yards. Percy looked at her and resumed his magical mystery tour. By the time she returned to our yard, so had Percy.

In the end, he hopped our other neighbor’s waist-high fence and chewed the side-yard grass. Nancy scooped him and returned him to the house. His jailbreak readied us for our Christmas departure better than basking in his presence ever could.

Don't take your eyes off him.