My youngest daughter attends school in South Carolina. About two months ago, a stray ran into her apartment and became a permanent fixture in their lives. They named him Richard, and he’s practically attached to my daughter at the hip. Last Sunday, my daughter went out of town for Spring Break. The original pet sitter canceled, and a friend of a friend offered to watch Richard. On the way home, the friend heard Richard meowing and went to check. The car door was open, and Richard escaped into the woods behind a Quality Inn. We tried everything; flyers, calls, the police-but no one had seen him. We were all convinced we would never see him again, and that we had lost a family member. It’s a bit spontaneous , but my eldest daughter and I made the abrupt decision to drive down to North Carolina- to the same Quality Inn where Richard made his great escape. From there, we commenced OFR- Operation Find Richard. We worked with hotel staff to rewind footage to see if he had meandered by. My daughter and I went out at midnight with flashlights, food, and only a shred of hope. The second day we spent entirely in a small neighborhood behind the woods, passing out flyers, talking to residents, and crawling through brambles and thorns covered in cat food. We found many cats, but none were Richard. That didn’t stop my daughter from trying to adopt all of them ??. It was in this neighborhood we found our first clue- a couple passing by said a “large and friendly” cat had strolled into their house and immediately run under the couch. He was white, brown, grey- our Richard to a T. My daughter mistakenly put a much higher reward on the flyers- and Richard soon became the infamous “million dollar cat” in the neighborhood. More tips came in, but no Richard still. That night, we went to the neighborhood one last time. A little boy told us he’d most definitely seen the cat, but he had run away. We decided to wait until nightfall, and as the sun set, that same boy knocked on my car window- shouting “we found Richard! We found Richard!” Immediately, my daughter took off sprinting. And there he was- Richard, pleased as punch under a tree. He immediately meowed and came over, trying to crawl through a whole in a rusty link and barbwire fence. It took many minutes of meowing, grabbing, and bloody hands and knees, but Richard was finally home, thanks to a group of hopeful children and an impossible search that came to a miraculous end. We’re still in shock. It’s like Richard was placed there, in a spot we’d searched at tens of times. Everyone had called it a miracle, and honestly- that’s what it is. Because there’s no other explanation for how our Richard came home.