Happy Ending
We found Kira (my missing kitty). Yay! Sunday night, Dan had the crazy idea of searching for her with flashlights in the middle of the night. She had been missing for three days and we had tried EVERYTHING else, so I agreed to give it a shot (though I had little faith in this plan). He had this crazy Boy Scout method of holding the flashlights where you hold it up to your nose (called spider sniffing??). The nose thing is so that you can see the reflections off of animal eyes better. We found some bunnies and a possom (that was about to go into my neighbor down the street's wide open front door). Then, low and behold, we found my baby girl hiding in the overgrowth between two houses about 6-8 doors down from us. Really, that simplifies the whole ordeal, though. Dan spotted the reflection of her eyes from WAY back in the side yard and had a hunch that it was her that he followed even though all he could really see was two tiny green dots that turned his direction every time I called "Kira girl!" and all I could really see was...well...nothing. Finally, she came close enough that we could tell that it was definitely her, but even then I had to sit in the bushes between the houses for about 10 minutes or so before she would get close enough that I could grab her. It crossed my mind that we might be mistaken for robbers or something, but at that point I wasn't really focused on that. Now, I am COVERED in mosquito bites, but Oh-SO-GLAD to have my girl back. The end.