The Circle of the Paw

Chapter 6

     Misha sat with Noah in the living room, letting the pajama-wearing boy hang onto her collar. Slowly, she rose to stand, pulling him up with her.  It was her way of teaching the boy how to use his legs rather than crawl. She was gentle with Noah, as if he was her own pup. Misha knew her game was a distraction. It allowed Jacob and Abigail time to scour the house for the cat she knew they would not find. The quicker they realize Akhi is gone, the sooner they'll search outdoors for him, she calculated.

When Akhi had bolted out the pet-flap and into the night, Misha took it upon herself to alert her family. She had barked frantically in front of Akhi's food bowl until Jacob came to check on her. Though her loud warnings had woken Noah, it was an emergency. Abigail had brought the crying toddler down the stairs in frustration and was the first to realize Akhi was nowhere to be seen. Once Abigail had noticed he was gone, Misha stopped barking and began to whimper on the kitchen floor, by the missing cat's bowl.

As the yellow retriever watched Jacob and Abigail on their hands and knees, peering under their couch with a flashlight, Misha thought back to the first few weeks after Akhi came to live with them as part of their family.

In those early days, the tiny black cat with the white donut shape on his fur had cut a tear on the underside of the family's living room sofa. He had crawled inside, hiding from the unfamiliar humans and the large dog he didn't know.

It was probably the one place he felt safe, Misha realized. Their owners had left out food and water by the kitchen island for their new cat, but Akhi didn't come out. After a few days of worrying over the skinny cat's lack of appetite, Jacob openly talked about sending Akhi to a shelter.

Misha realized that the future of this anxious, feral cat was resting on her shoulders. The yellow retriever could relate to her new feline roommate, as she had also needed to adjust to new homes over her lifetime. Every night, while Jacob and Abigail slept, Misha used her snout to push Akhi's food bowl from the kitchen over to the living room couch, where the scared cat was quietly waiting.

It had taken several nights, but Akhi eventually gave in and cautiously crept out of a gray fabric crevice. Misha patiently waited for him, lying down at an unthreatening distance, making sure the new cat was the one to eat from the bowl, and not some rodent that could have snuck into the house. It took almost the whole night for Akhi to creep over to the bowl and scarf down a few morsels, before quickly sprinting back to the bowels of the couch.

After a week of the same pattern, Akhi began to sleep out in the living room, near Misha's doggie pillow, rather than inside the couch. Jacob and Abigail were thrilled that their scrawny new cat had regained some weight.

Despite this bit of progress, Akhi still had incredible fits of panic and anger, caused by minor things. More than once, their humans came home to a piece of furniture with claw marks shredded into it, or felt Akhi bite their hand when a loud siren passed the street outside their townhouse. After an especially bad episode, where Akhi scratched the leg of Abigail's visiting aunt to the point of needing stitches, Misha realized he would need her help to subdue the worst of the instincts he had learned from a year living on the streets.