Found

Jessie couldn't wait to see her cat - but she wasn't the only one

- Miranda Dickinson

The small advert in the local paper caught Jessie's eye... Found large male cat. Black, with distinctive white markings on nose and paw. Friendly and clearly loved. Call St Gertrude Cat Rescue to claim...

It had to be him. Jessie clutched the folded newspaper page to her heart as she hurried up the path of the modest bungalow on the far edge of town.

It looked like all the others in the street, save for one thing - a bright wooden sign erected in the front garden that read St Gertrude Cat Rescue - Where fur-ever friends are found.

The words on the sign were smiling moggies - stretching, bending and curling to form the letters, like a troupe of happy feline yoga masters.

It was hopeful and joyous, two emotions Jessie had lost in the fortnight since Houdini had gone missing. She'd looked everywhere for him. Knocked on every door, put up posters with her favourite photo of him, checked garages and alleyways and garden sheds. And with every achingly empty space she'd encountered, her heart had broken a little more.

But this could be the moment everything changed.

Reaching the front door, Jessie pressed the grey nose button on the cat-faced doorbell, hope firing within her.

Even the name of the cat rescue centre lifted her spirits.

'Offer a prayer to St Gertrude. She'll find your cat,' Jessie's grandma used to tell neighbours when their cats went missing. 'Whatever mischief your moggie has got themselves into, old St Gertie will see you right.' And, more often than not, it worked.

Jessie wished her grandmother was here now. A lifelong cat lover, Grandma had a magnet on her fridge of St Gertrude cuddling a cat that she used to pat whenever she passed it.

'She's sent all of my cats to me,' she'd insist. 'And one day, she'll send one to you.'