While I was searching for my way home, she was searching for me.

She came back to the neighbourhood and walked through the area, looking and calling my name. She did not decide that I had chosen to leave. She did not assume that I was an outdoor cat who could manage by myself.

She knew that I was a domestic cat lost in unfamiliar territory.

She kept searching.

Then, one evening, I heard a familiar voice calling the name she had given me.

Tami.

It was the voice I had been waiting for.

I had wandered through unfamiliar streets, followed the smell of food and accepted help wherever I could find it. A kind family had taken me to a private veterinarian to be sterilised, but I had continued searching because I still did not know how to return to the CatsHope™ home.

Now, at last, the two-legs who had rescued me from beside the drain had come back for me.

I was thinner than before, and my once-rich coat had faded. I was tired from hunger, heat and the strain of surviving outside.

But I was alive.

She had found me again. This time, when she took me home, my babies were already there waiting for me.

And this time, I went home for good.