Friday, June 5, 2026 - 2:13 PM

We're still looking for Gray. It's been hard.

On Tuesday the rescue group sent out a volunteer with her scent dog to help us narrow down where he might be. It was a wet, rainy day, but the rain let up long enough for her to come out. At one point, the dog took off running and her handler thinks she was chasing our boy, so that was...really good, actually. It'd super good to know that he's out and moving around, and not too hurt to run. Obviously, we'd rather have him back, but that was still helpful. And again, it's given us more direction as to where to look.

Then, Wednesday, the rescue sent us a found cat alert that looked promising! A little grey cat, looking a bit worse for wear and very scared, but very similar to our boy. The rescue that posted the found cat poster would only be open for calls to check up on it from 2-4pm, so we had to wait for our window.

We did our nightly search Wednesday with hope in our hearts. The little grey cat had been found pretty damn far away from us, but the lady with the search dog assured us he could've climbed onto a truck or something. So we stared at the photos in hope.

I'd taken a photo of Gray and D hiding in their carrier the first day we got to our new apartment that lined up well with the found cat poster that had his face at a very similar angle. Gray is the cat on the left, the found cat is the one on the right.

And then we were finally able to call the rescue yesterday...and the found cat doesn't have a microchip, while Gray does. Not our cat.

Sodden with rain and disappointment, we went out to search for our boy last night. We called, walked, and looked, swinging flashlights and hoping for our boy. Rounding a fence, we heard a cat mrowing at us! We froze, and called, and a cat popped up onto the fence!

Not Gray.

One of the neighborhood cats we'd seen a few times, a silver/brown tabby came over to us. We asked it it had seen our son. It talked to us a little bit, got some pets, and went on its way. We went back to our search.

A few minutes later, our new friend bounded out from behind us. They mrowed some more, and we, who'd been joking about Gray being off on his Studio Ghibli adventures, joked that this would be very in keeping with that aesthetic. We followed the cat along the trails, especially since they were trails we intended to go down anyway. The cat stopped and yowled a few times...but it was just about a dog coming down the trail. Eventually, we separated from the cat and finished our search for the night.

We're still looking. We're tired, it's hard, and it hurts. But we're not gonna stop, either.