Safely Home: Two Dark Days For Dark Star

We were so relieved to get Dark Star back, even though she’d only been missing 48 hours. Not knowing what has happened to a pet is heartbreaking, and has happened to us in the past. We even have a cat, Jack, who is microchipped who has been lost for two years. We fear he was taken by a coyote at the time, even though we live in a suburban area. Dark Star likes to roam a one-block radius around our home. The nights were getting colder, so I was going out and calling for her. When she appeared I would bring her in for the night, then let her out the next day. Two nights in a row with freezing temperatures, Dark Star did not come when I called for her. I walked all around the block calling for her, and returned home very worried. The next morning we received a call from PetLink. They confirmed that Dark Star belonged to us from the information retrieved by her microchip and informed us that she was at the county Animal Services. She had been taken there after she bit someone who was trying to take her in and ended up in quarantine. We arrived at Animal Services with our vaccination paperwork and they released her to us on the condition that we keep Dark Star indoors for the ten-day quarantine period. We did that, and Dark Star is doing well now. She was a bit traumatized by the experience, but she was very happy to be home with us. We are concerned that people might not make any effort to determine if a lost cat they find belongs to anyone. We have imagined what would have happened if Dark Star had not been microchipped. It would have been very sad for us. Instead, our cat is back home with us and is actually safer than she was before.