His name’s Hawaii.  Sometimes we call him, “Hawaii, the comfort kitty”. Mary calls him “Karate”, but we think she’s just hearing us wrong.

Many of you probably never even knew we had a cat, much less that we lost him, but for those who have been worried sick about where he might be — he’s back!  Ok — technically he didn’t come back of his own accord.  

Three weeks before we left on our break, our cat mysteriously disappeared.  Some said he ran away, others said a dog ate him, others said he was killed.

We waited for him to return.

But when we came back from break and found a family of mice living in our house, we could wait no longer! (Hawaii was really good at catching mice and eating them). Our thought was to perhaps get another cat–until someone said they saw Hawaii down at the soccer field below our house (about a half mile hike away).

So, I and the four children ventured down and, sure enough, we found our cat!  I tucked him under my arms and hiked him back up to our house.

His second night back, we heard a ruckus on the front porch and there was Hawaii playing with a mouse (apparently cats actually do play with mice just to be mean before they put them out of their misery).  Since he’s been back he’s eaten at least two mice…and a grasshopper…I’m not sure what else! That might not sound like good news to you, but for us it’s very good news because every mouse he gets rid of is one less mouse in our house.

Everyone here tells us that cats often will just leave and go other places.  They tell us since Hawaii is a boy cat, one day he will leave and go find true love (our interpretation; not theirs). 

But for now he’s back! Fighting with us the battle against the mice — with an occasional grasshopper snack!

Also, here’s why we call him the “comfort kitty” — in the following picture Onesimus is sick, but note who is comforting him (besides Susanna):

And in this one Susanna’s sick — but note who is doing a very good job comforting her…