I’ve lived in Dundee nearly 10 years now, and consider it my adopted home.
But even though I’ve stayed in my current flat for three years, I couldn’t have told you who lives in my street before last week.
I know some neighbours, of course – there’s M, right downstairs with his sketchbook and camera. And S on the ground floor with her mum and dad, who have the loveliest patch of garden and dry out sweet herbs in the summer.
There’s Bailey the Labrador, who lolls out of the porch down the road, and Mr Volvo, whose name I don’t know but who parks next to my car and waves.
But aside from these few recurring characters, I don’t know my neighbours. I don’t know many people my age who do.
That all changed last week, though, when my cat Fable pulled a disappearing act.
Now, I’m no novice cat parent, I know that outdoor cats are wont to roam.
The thing is, Fable’s not really a proper cat.
She rarely leaves my side, and if she is outside and hears me, she sprints to meet me.
So after the second night she didn’t come home, I knew something was wrong.
A frantic, freezing search for Fable
I searched for her on foot in the garden and along the street, rattling her dish of Purina and calling her name.
I phoned round local vets, shelters and animal control; posted on Missing Pets Dundee and Angus (who were so helpful) and put blankets and toys outside for her to smell.
My partner Steven tramped through wild bramble bushes in the dark, getting scratched and nipped beyond belief just to catch a glimpse of her.
No such luck. So on day four I printed off some posters and, with our hearts dropping in time with the temperature, we got cracking.
We put them up in every close, on garages and noticeboards, even through people’s doors.
At first, I was so nervous knocking on doors and pressing security buzzers. I expected suspicion, eye-rolling, or hostility.
Instead, I found a wave of sympathy and kindness which took the legs out from under me.
Kindness of strangers is alive in Dundee
A group of incredibly stoned guys we met on the way into their building become sober and serious when they learned of Fable’s disappearance: “We’ll look out for her, it’s so cold! C’mon boys!”
Bailey the Labrador’s human answered his door sleepy and bemused, but gave me rushed “yes, of course!” when I asked to check his garden.
A lady who I learned was called Maureen, smoking idly on her back step, was kind to the manic-looking, twig-covered couple found begging for access to her close.
The girl with the Yorkie down the road – we’ve only waved over the garden before – swapped numbers with me, promising to call if she spotted Fable.
Friends lent torches, offered to distribute more posters, shared the Facebook posts.
Both M and S of my building assured me they had seen the tiny menace herself. I didn’t know if I could believe that; we have several tuxedo cats in the neighbourhood.
But they insisted they knew her well enough to identify her.
Two sweet wee girls in a nearby playpark saw the poster and told me: “We know that cat! We saw her on Halloween when she came out to play!”
Fable does like to speak to folk on her travels, but I was touched to learn that they liked speaking to her too.
I realised that my neighbours might not know me, but they know my cat.
Glad to have met an angel called Wendy
Then there was Wendy, a lady around my mum’s age who I met walking along the street. I almost knocked her down, as I was running frantically from door to door.
Wendy seemed to see my heart breaking and threw herself into the search with as much gusto as myself and Steven.
She spent hours out looking in the bitter cold, and even spotted Fable one morning briefly before she darted off. That flicker of hope kept me going for another two days.
There were others: the woman in the house at the end of the road, who offered us kind words as she took her bins out. The lad over the hedge who called me when he saw a different black and white cat, in case it was her.
And then? After a week of tireless searching, Fable came home.
Cold, starving and underweight, but otherwise unscathed, she sauntered through the cat flap like she’d never been gone.
I’ve never been so relieved – and so quick to buy a tracking collar for the merry wanderer.
And I can’t say I’m glad she disappeared. But I am glad to know my neighbours now – Wendy and Maureen, Bailey’s dad and Yorkie’s mum, the high guys and the sweet girls.
Even now, as I was writing this, I was interrupted by the postie at the door. He had nothing for me, except a question: “Did ye get your wee cat back?”
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