On January 30, 2024, Dansk, aka Danskie—a cat I had recently rescued and adopted—escaped and disappeared into an unfamiliar neighborhood. And while cats have been known to find their way back home, in this instance, the odds didn’t seem to be in our favor. I didn’t even know if Danskie considered my place to be “home” yet. 

This story has a happy ending, but allow me to backtrack. 

Danskie, named after everyone’s favorite Danish butter cookies, had been scheduled for a spay surgery that morning. To keep her calm on the way to the vet, I removed her from the carrier and held her on my lap for the duration of the ride. Once we arrived, instead of putting her back in the carrier, I decided that I would just carry her in my arms. 

In the words of Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman: “Big mistake. Big. Huge.” In the blink of an eye, Danskie scrambled from my hold and ducked under a parked car, but not before leaving an angry red scratch down my chest. 

Everyone—the vet staff, my brother, and myself—crouched down on the concrete and tried to coax Danskie out. When our combined efforts failed, someone grabbed her leash and tried to yank her out—a terrible idea, as it turns out that cats are liquid. In one smooth move, Danskie slipped out of her harness and dashed out through an opening under the gate.

Not at all unlike a small mob we searched the neighboring properties, starting with the house we believed she had entered immediately after running off. We patrolled the neighborhood in the car. I asked everyone if they had seen a cat that fit Danskie’s description. No dice. Danskie was nowhere to be found. 

I surprised myself when I burst into tears.

Maybe it was because I had just experienced panic, fear, hope, and despair in the space of minutes. Or maybe because Danskie was the very first animal I had ever had the privilege to care for. But I hadn’t cried like that since I was a child.

We headed home and made “Missing” posters for social media and for distribution in the neighborhood. We coordinated with the vet clinic and planned a return visit to the barangay in the evening to check the CCTV footage, and do another search on foot. We came back, litter and toys in tow, hoping the scent would be enough to lure Danskie back to ground zero.  

It was also then that we decided to tap the cat network.

Call it folk belief, urban legend, or Internet lore, but the idea is that if your cat gets lost, you can ask the cats in the neighborhood to tell your cat to return home. 

We encountered several lovely cats in the area and asked for their help, to tell Danskie to return to the general area as soon as she could so we could take her home. “Tell Danskie to return to the street where we were last,” we’d say as we fed them treats. At one point, I even asked a dog for help. 

I tried to stay positive, but I knew that the longer Danskie went missing, the less likely we’d be reunited. I counted the hours like they were days. The feeling of desolation only grew when we found out that the barangay’s CCTV cameras had actually been down for a while. There was no way to check which way she had actually gone or if she returned to the area. 

There were a few things that gave me hope though: the vet staff who were going above and beyond to help me track Danskie (they actually went to the barangay separately to check the cameras), my family who were doing all they could to help locate her, all the helpful neighbors and friends, Danskie’s kittens who were learning to get into trouble; and of course, every tilapia, baka, orange, calico, tortie, and solid puspin we came across who I knew was passing the message along.

On the second evening of Danskie’s disappearance, I received a call from the clinic. “We think we have Danskie,” they said. I stared at the photo they sent me. The cat looked like Danskie, but was it really her? As a bi-color feline, Danskie’s features aren’t exactly unique. She does, however, have a prominent black mark on her left hind leg and a black dot on her right hind leg—both of which I was able to confirm when I picked her up. Danskie was finally coming home. A little dirty, a little stressed; very likely famished, but safe.

With so many cats and dogs (and reptiles!) getting separated from their parents, I know I’m ridiculously lucky that things panned out the way they did. I count my blessings that: (1) it took only two days before we were reunited with Danskie; (2) we ended up choosing the vet clinic we did; (3) there were no cars on the street that fateful day, and; (4) that the cat network came through.

Puspins are special creatures. Their existence brings so much light, love, and joy to this world, but to have even just one enter your life and alter your course is one of the universe’s more magical moments. I honestly don’t think Danskie would have returned to such an unfamiliar place if it weren’t for the puspins on that street. 

Danskie was once just a random neighborhood cat, but she opened my heart to a world of puspins and aspins I would have never noticed otherwise. In everything I do now, I hope to pass this message along: that the capacity to be a steward for these animals is something we inherently carry within us.

Oh, and that the cat network is indeed real.