This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., and my family and I are celebrating a reason to be truly thankful.

If you read the post about our new kitten, then you know we found him because of an unfortunate circumstance. On October 23, our shy, sweet Lily kitty went missing.

Our hope that she would turn up in hours turned into days. Then weeks. We took down flyers ruined by the weather and replaced them with laminated ones that would bear the elements.

I admit that I struggled to remain hopeful as we neared the completion of her fourth week missing. She gets scared of every little thing inside our own house, and I couldn’t imagine her exploring outside for long. She’d find a dark, tight hidey hole, and maybe–maybe–come out to hunt or to be fed by a friendly stranger.

I kept up my…