BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER

Lily's cat Hobbs has been missing for almost two months. Click back to March if you don't know that long story. Today, out of the blue, I get a phone call from the neighbor of the vet's office. He said that he thought Hobbs had been in his barn, but until today wasn't sure. He has four cats, and said he often gets strays wandering into his barn and eating the cat food.

He spotted Hobbs today, went over to the vet's office to check out the picture we posted of Hobbs, then went back with binoculars, and confirmed that Hobbs was hiding on the roof of his barn under an overhang. He called me, and I ran right over. I had a trap and tuna ready. I climbed a ladder to see Hobbs, and even after calling him, he wasn't coming out. I left the trap on the roof of the barn, and said I would be back with Lily. Being today is Lily's birthday, I didn't want to get her hopes up, but we needed her to get Hobbs out. So after school, I took the kids over, and Lily climbed up the ladder where she could see Hobbs. She started talking to him, and he slowly moved out. It took about five minutes, but she was able to pet him, but couldn't quite reach to get a hold of him. Plus, being up on the ladder, she didn't want to let go with one hand. The whole five minutes I was holding Lily's legs so she wouldn't fall off the ladder. I started to cry as soon as he came out and was letting her pet him. He poked his head into the trap and I yelled at Lily to close the door.

We had him trapped! Hobbs totally freaked out, jumping all over. I had to get the trap down off the roof, with a crazy cat inside! The kids went nuts! They were jumping up and down, cheering that we had caught Hobbs. We thanked the nice man who called us (and I had brought him a bag of cat food as a thank you for feeding Hobbs this whole time!).  Nate ran into the vet's office and told them we had Hobbs, and took the missing poster down.

When we got home, Hobbs was still scared and ran right under our bed. The funny thing is that Jay was under there. Jay is Hobb's brother that we got AFTER we lost Hobbs. We had plans to go out to dinner, so we just left them alone. When we got home, Hobbs has been sociable with us, and curled right up on Lily's fuzzy blankets, like he had never left.

What a great birthday present for Lily, to have her cat home! Thank you Lord for this miracle!