Have you seen this cat?

If you have, I'm secretly hoping you won't say a word.

He's now safely harbored with our next-door neighbors after living four straight days in the space between the roof of our addition and our second-floor deck. He wouldn't let anyone come near enough to rescue, at least until a thunderstorm that left him feeling terrified and more than a little damp. After the storm passed, I went upstairs, coaxed him onto our deck, let him rub up against my calf for a while, then picked him up and carried him inside as each of his front paws found one of my shoulders.

Within two minutes I'd broken out in hives.

Next-door neighbors to the rescue. They came equipped with a cat carrier, food, and a willingness to foster for as long as it took.

It took about an hour. After that point, they were in love. By the next morning, the cat was napping against the stomach of one of their young daughters. The day after that, they took him to the vet and discovered no disease, no microchip. By day three, he had a name -- Bird -- after the creature they assumed he'd chased up a tree to land on our roof in the first place.

So we'll all work collectively to do the right thing: Spreading the word on the block, alerting shelters, putting up fliers. But we'll also hope that no one answers the call -- that there's not a sweet little girl somewhere pining for her lost cat -- because Bird has found a home where he can sit in a front window, looking out on the world. It's the same home that will soon say good-bye to beloved Zelda the mutt, who is now rejecting food and having trouble walking. It's nice to think of new life filling the gap of that sweet, old, grumpus of a life, and that the girls might have an animal that lets them near him in the way Zelda never would.

So you know when I put up my fliers I'll be doing so sparingly, and it's really not my fault if the tape doesn't hold, because I don't control the humidity after all, and they just don't make tape the way they used to.