“I always wanted to believe that she was OK.”
Two Years Gone — And Then, a Miracle
Two years ago, Alexis Keith woke up expecting to be greeted by her cat, Lilly, like always. But that morning, there was only silence. The third-floor window had been left open overnight to ease the summer heat — and it was now slightly ajar. Alexis’s heart sank.
“She normally wanted to get fed right away,” she said. “But that day, she was gone.”
Lilly had apparently leapt from the third-floor window to a deck below, and then to the ground. Alexis feared the worst — that her sweet cat had injured herself and disappeared.
She sprang into action, blanketing the neighborhood with flyers, joining every local lost pet group she could find, and enlisting help to post daily about Lilly in a community Facebook group — for an entire year.
But there were no sightings. No clues. Just heartbreak.
“I always wanted to believe she was OK,” Alexis said. “That someone kind had taken her in. She was such a sweetheart — I hoped she’d win somebody over.”
Time marched on. Alexis moved — twice — got married, and had a baby. But she never stopped hoping.
Then, nearly two years after Lilly disappeared, Alexis got a call that changed everything. A nonprofit clinic, SAVECats, had taken in an injured gray cat. They scanned her for a microchip — and Lilly’s name popped up.
“It took me, like, three hours to really register that they really had her,” Alexis said. “They left me a voicemail like it was no big deal!”
As it turns out, Lilly had been surviving outdoors the entire time — weathering Maryland’s snow, storms, and sweltering summers. A good Samaritan had been feeding her, assuming she was feral because of her ear — which appeared “tipped,” a mark used by vets to show a feral cat has been fixed. But the damage had likely occurred during her initial fall.
“I used to think of her every time it rained or snowed,” Alexis said. “And she really was out there. Through all of it.”
When the two were finally reunited, it was as if no time had passed.
“She immediately smelled my hand and just fell right into it,” Alexis recalled.
Now, Lilly is back home — safe, warm, and maybe a bit more self-assured. She has her own cozy space in the basement of the family’s new home, complete with a cat-sized door to slip upstairs when she feels like it (and to avoid the dogs when she doesn’t).
“She’s adjusting wonderfully,” Alexis said. “It’s like she came back better than she left.”
And maybe just a little tougher.
“She used to be scared of our little dog. Now? She stands her ground,” Alexis laughed. “She’s like, ‘I survived two years in the wild. You? You wouldn’t last two minutes.’”