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In a City Built on Power, Cats Have Seized Control
Late one evening just before Easter in the spring of 2017, in a block of townhomes somewhere along Massachusetts Avenue Southeast near Lincoln Park, something horrible happened. The following morning when Cricket Fuller and her husband awoke, they sensed it: Lorna was missing.
Every morning, just as the sun spilled light onto the horizon, Lorna, their slightly chonky indoor feline with gray fur and white coloring on her paws and chest, marched onto their bed to announce in high-pitched shrieks that it was time for breakfast. But for the first time Fuller and her husband could ever recall, Lorna had not come to them to demand food. The home felt empty.
They scoured through every corner of their house, but they found no sign of Lorna. She was gone. Fuller concluded Lorna had somehow managed to slip out the door the night before while she was speaking to some of their neighbors.
Fuller’s husband raced out the door, and led them both on a frantic search through their yard, their neighbors’ yards, and the surrounding alleys and street with the hopes of rescuing their beloved cat. “Lorna!” they yelled, “Lorna!”
They tried not to panic and hold out hope that their adopted cat, a Christmas gift from Fuller to her husband 7 years earlier, was okay. They both tried their best to stave off a thrumming sense of dread. They tried not to think about how she might have been hit “by a car or killed in…