It’s gone midnight; the tail end of Storm Amy. So still very blowy but thankfully no longer raining.  Which is helpful as I am currently walking the streets: torch in one hand, box of dried cat food rattling in the other.

“Molly! Molly!”  I’m trying to pitch my voice in the sweet spot between “audible to cats”  and “ not disturbing the neighbours.” I’ve got the streets to myself – Saturday night in suburbia – just the occasional urban fox… Oh God, she might have been attacked by a fox!  She’ll have never come across foxes before. “Molly!”

Round the corner, I come across a mooch of teenage lads.  Have they by any chance seen a cat looking a bit lost? Sort of tabby coloured – light brown, dark brown, white tummy? Quite young – really long stripy tail, really really long whiskers?

They confer. Turns out they have seen a cat but it was grey, very stout and didn’t look lost. Probably not Molly, we agree.  They offer to knock on a few doors, which is a kind thought but – given that it’s now gone one o’clock in the morning – is best put on the back burner for now.

They will check, they say, if they do come across any cats,  whether they respond to the name of Molly.

What I don’t tell them, as we go our separate ways, is that Molly may not know she’s called Molly because, just two days ago, we were calling her Sally (on account of her being long and tall), and a week before that, while she was still at Battersea Cats Home, the name on her cell door was Savannah, which sounds like a shade on a Farrow and Ball colour chart. 

Trouble was, neither Sally nor Savannah fitted.  They didn’t evoke any catty response – not a twitch in those extra long whiskers nor a flick in that snaky tail. And I was finding it hard to bring her name quickly to mind – when calling her to stop clawing at the net curtains, for example.”Stop that Willow! No, not Willow…what are you called again? Sally – that’s it. Stop that, Sally!  Ah – too late…

“It says here that some cats don’t like names which are sibilant,” says Actor Laddie.  “They think that you’re hissing at them.  How about Mabel? I like the name Mabel.”

As do I, but there’s already a Mabel in the family – LittleSis’s cat. Two would play havoc with the cats’ WhatsApp group. “What about  Molly?”  suggests the Infant Phenomenon. We tried it on for size … Molly!  And she turns her head and looks at us! So Molly it is … sold to the elegant feline with the long tail.

The staff at the Rescue Centre had told us that Savannah/Molly was something of an escapologist. Up till now, she’d been living in a flat without any garden access.  Well, in the two weeks with us – that’s how long they recommend you keep new cats indoors -, she’d climbed the highest book shelves, perched on top of the wardrobe and laid waste to some of the carpets and curtains. I shudder to think what she made of her previous digs in her two years  there. I bet they won’t get their deposit back on that flat.

So we’ve had a fortnight of Molly looking wistfully through the picture windows at the garden.  The first time she saw a magpie hopping around on the patio. Savannah/Molly launched herself at the bird, and thus discovered glass.

“She is going to love going outside” we all agreed. We fitted a cat flap in the kitchen – a fancy one which linked to Molly’s microchip, to prevent trespassing Toms. You have to set this up by “encouraging” her to put her head through the flap. Fair to say, this was not popular but we reckoned she’d get the hang of it after a few days.

We promised ourselves that we’d let her out for a while on Saturday afternoon. A  storm was forecast for later but for the time being it was just a bit cloudy.  We opened the picture window and sat just outside, on the bench. Molly came to have a look for a bit, and then she sat by the door for a bit, then she stepped outside and dashed back in for a bit. I did some weeding, then it started to drizzle so we called it a day.

We had a comfy evening catching up with Slow Horses.  Molly watched it from ActorLaddie’s lap and seemed a bit bemused but of course she hadn’t got all the backstory.  I promised to read her the books.

It was as we were turning in for the night – and I suspect this will not come as a surprise to you – that we realised the cat was missing.  Neither of us had heard the catflap open but it had been very windy; as we searched it became gradually clear that she must have gone out. There was no sign of her in the garden, so we got torches and headed out to separately search the streets.

Now some of you may remember that we do have Previous in cat misplacement. It’s Blog 311 if you want to remind yourself, and was jolly uncomfortable at the time but – spoiler alert – Willow did respond to her name from quite a distance away, and all was well and all manner of things were well. 

But Willow had been Willow for more than a dozen years and whereas Molly’s name is still pretty fresh out of the box. There’s enough Missing Cat pictures on lamp posts to show that not all of these stories have a happy ending.  It’s time to head home.

ActorLaddie has had not a sight of her either – not a whisker. We hope she is sheltering somewhere but are not optimistic. “I’ll just put a post on the street WhatsApp,” I say. We have lovely neighbours so it is worth a shot.  “You turn in.” I step out into the garden for a last look as my phone is coming to life, call Molly’s name …. and hear a miaow.  I think I can see something on the fence at the end of the garden, so we grab torches and head down.

The end of our garden is pretty overgrown – more of a rewilding project than a border. The back fence has a trellis at the top and beyond that – last time I saw it – our neighbour had soft fruit, brambles and nettles. And there is Molly but she seems to have got herself caught up with the brambles on the other side of the fence and can’t work out how to get back. She’s managed to get her head through the trellis into our garden but there’s no way the rest will get follow.

Long story short, I get the tool box and we end up having to dismantle that bit of fencing to free her up. Does she purr gratefully in our arms? Does she heck … she bolts back the house and hurls herself in through the flap with the speed of a Lioness – specifically Hannah Hampton saving a penalty. 

We’re going to have fun with Molly …