Have You Seen This Cat? She's Been Missing For 4 Years

ARLINGTON, MA — A small silk soft shoulder cat went missing from the Henderson and Swain street area of Arlington four years ago and her owner knows that the chances are slim that she's still out there between the foxes, fishercats and the coyotes that seem to be hanging around Arlington. But she still has hope.

"Maybe someone took her in," said Arlington resident Shana Goodman. And that's why she posted one more time to a new app to help owners find missing animals.

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Nod went missing in February 2013. Goodman was at work while a mattress company was delivering a mattress to one of the roommates. The roommates closed all three cats that they had in a room in the back, and then the delivery men came. For reasons that Goodman still finds confusing when the delivery men arrived they asked that all the doors in the home be open, so the roommates complied though it was cold outside. With the mattress in place, the roommates figured it was safe to let the cats back out of the room they were tucked into. What they didn't realize until much later was that the delivery men had left that back door open. And Nod, who loved to sit on the steps near the back door was gone.

All three of the women went out searching for Nod, making the sound that was known to draw her back. "It's really weird," said Goodman. "But there's this film Eric the Viking. There's a sound from that movie kind of like 'TeeTummTeeeTumm' that would draw her out like nothing else," she said.

Goodman and her roommates canvassed the neighborhood making the weird sounds in the hopes that Nod would come home. She didn't. And the next day Hurricane Nemo hit the coast.

They posted fliers around the neighborhood and periodically someone would call with a tip. During the lockdown while police were searching for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, someone mentioned they thought they saw Nod at the field near Alewife.

Goodman threw caution to the wind and headed out there to search for her kitty. She set humane traps out there. "I caught a yellow tabby and a raccoon," she said. But no Nod.

At one point after the posters went up, a woman contacted her and said there was a black cat in her garage. She got a carrier coaxed out and had it ready for Goodman. But when she arrived it definitely wasn't her cat. Still, the woman who'd found it already had enough cats. So Goodman agreed to figure out how to find the owner of this young neutered and declawed male. She put up notices but no one reached out to her about it.

She did wonder. "What if they switched?"

What if the owner of this black cat or some other black cat took her Nod in by mistake?

Nod has heart murmur and a microchip. She would be 12 if she is still alive. And she loves to eat plastic bags.

"She loves them more than anything. If we came home with plastic grocery bags full of groceries she'd jump up to eat the handle as we were walking them in," said Goodman. And when they'd tuck the plastic crinkly bags into drawers, Nod had an uncanny ability to remember where they were and would try to get them out and eat the bag.

She would also sit on anyone's shoulder who let her, preferring to be at the highest spot possible in the room.

Goodman is hoping that if someone took in a stray black cat about four years ago and any of her quirks sound familiar they will let her know.

"I know it's not probable at this point, but you never know," she said.

Photo courtesy of Shana Goodman via lost and found pets.