Our (very) temporary pet

This cat showed up on our doorstep one evening. We have a lot of stray cats in the neighborhood but they are all annoying and skittish. This cat was a super friendly cat that loved to be around people. I made the mistake of giving it some food . . . but I felt bad for the poor thing! It just sat there crying and crying. We called a few people and posted in on facebook but all our cat-lover friends all said the same thing: they have enough cats already and don't need another one. I really didn't mind it hanging around our house . . . except for one thing, my kids were petrified of the thing. Like scream and run if they were outside and it came anywhere near them. Last Saturday was a beautiful day and we were outside doing yard work and playing with Samuel while the girls napped. All the cat wanted to do was be by us and rub up against our legs. Samuel wasn't having anything to do with that. I ended up carrying the cat across the street, into our friends' backyard, and dropping it over their fence into the backyard of the people that lived behind them. It took about . . . 30 minutes before the cat found her way back to our house. She would follow us around the house (her on the outside, us on the inside) all day long meowing/crying for attention. If we were in the sunroom, she was on the back step. If we were in Samuel's room, she was on the deck right outside his window. If we were in the living room, she was at the front door. Not kidding! About the time I had a plan in place (or at least a couple of options of what to do with the cat), it disappeared. The weather turned cold, it snowed, and the cat went on to search for a house where the people would actually let her inside. It wanted inside our house so badly that it would sneak inside if you so much as opened the door a crack. One night when I was unloading my kids from the van, I had to remove the cat from our house 4 times. Imagine the shrieks and screams coming from my kids that night!! It would even climb into our van when we were loading the kids up to go somewhere. Samuel asked for days after she left, "where did my poor friend cat go?" We don't know - but we hope she found a nice warm house and a nice new family to go with it!