Long ago and far away, Geoff‘s biggest worry was people mispronouncing his name (Gee-hoff, anyone?).

Nowadays, you can call him Geoff or Gee-hoff or Gumby for all he cares. Things like that have a way of losing their importance once you’ve become a striped miracle.

Until this time last week, I’d never imagined we might see Geoff again at Tabby’s Place. He’d been one of those no-brainer adoptions, a handsome sweetheart from New York City with an oversized personality and jumbo amber eyes. As predicted, the youngster barely cleared from Quarantine before purring and head-butting his way into a smitten adopter’s life.

It was a fitting finale after a sad start to life. When his original family decided that their apartment was “too small,” it had been off to NYC Animal Care & Control for Geoff and his lookalike friend Mike (or, as they were originally called, “Tiger Sr.” and “Tiger Jr.”). We all speculated as to whether the family’s apartment had shrunken, or Mike and Geoff had grown.

One way or the other, they were doubly blessed to make their way to Ringoes, then out the door to doting forever homes. Mike even received the stellar new name of SupermanMike (courtesy of his new five-year-old human bean friend). It all took place two long years ago.

Happy end of story?
Yes…until the phone call came in from Luzerne County, PA last week.

On the line was a staffer at an emergency veterinary hospital. A scrawny, dehydrated swirl tabby had been scooped off the street by animal control. Realizing immediately that the cat (a) was massively friendly and (b) had clearly just sustained major injuries consistent with being hit by a car, the animal control folks rushed him to the hospital.

As a matter of course, the vets scanned the swirly, purry-even-in-pain boy for a microchip. Bing! The tabby was chipped. The wonder of a microchip is that, in a matter of minutes, it can connect a cat’s finders to his family. The frustration in this case was that the phone number on file for this tabby’s humans was out of service.

Undaunted, the vets and the microchip company went back one page further, to see if they could reach the injured cat’s previous caretakers. That next number on file? Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary.

By now you’ve guessed it. The cat with the beat-up face and broken femur was none other than our lanky love-bug…Geoff.

How long was our sweetheart outdoors?
What became of his people (for whom we can find no current contact information)?
How did Geoff end up 3 hours away?
We have a bucketload of questions about what happened, and we may or may not ever find answers.

But there was never any question as to what we’d do. “He’s ours,” Jonathan said once the call sank in. “Of course he’s ours.”

Once a Tabby’s Place cat, always a Tabby’s Place cat.

The Luzerne county vets determined that Geoff was stable enough for travel, so our own huge-hearted Danielle made the seven-hour round trip to bring him home. Today, Geoff is scheduled for surgery to repair his horrifically broken femur.

It seems our brave love-bug has also picked up a few new worries along the way. Our vet has detected a heart murmur as well as signs of hyperthyroidism, all of which suggests that Geoff may be older than we first suspected. It’s also possible that his heart murmur was caused by the accident. We will know more this week.

We already know the most important thing: Geoff is safe, loved, warm and on the mend. We’ve been treating his massive injury with pain medications, but there’s no question that today’s surgery will bring him major relief. Despite all the pain he’s surely felt, Geoff has hardly stopped purring from the moment he came “home” to Tabby’s Place. (In fact, he frustrated the vet by purring straight through his exam yesterday, thereby making it impossible to hear his heart.)

Geoff’s little friend Mike may be the one renamed for a superhero, but Geoff’s shown himself to be a survivor of the superfeline variety. I promise to keep you posted on SuperGeoff…and to snuggle him on each of your behalf.

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