The Full Story...

OK, admittedly I feel a bit of a prat for causing the reports of Mulder's death to become exaggerated. But I honestly didn't think there was any real chance that he was still in the neighbourhood and alive. As it is, I'm very impressed (as well, of course, as desperately happy and relieved) that he managed to last out for so long -- there must at least have been some trickling of water into the place where he was trapped.

So, here's what happened. This morning, B. got up and went downstairs to feed Scully (who's never shown any signs of wandering off, thank God), and found that once again we had two cats. Mulder is, as I've said, looking really thin, seems rather weak, and he's certainly being clingier (and hungrier) than usual -- but he's still sleek, perky and obviously very happy to be home. He's emerged from the whole thing remarkably unscathed, in fact.

Half an hour after we'd made this discovery, we had a phone call from someone in the street which backs on to ours, who'd had one of our flyers through her door days ago. Being reasonably sure that her shed was impregnable to cats, and not having opened it recently, she hadn't checked it for Mulder's presence.

Yesterday evening, however (and this is the remarkable bit), a white cat started behaving oddly in this woman's back garden -- miaowing outside her back door and, when it had her attention, walking over to her shed. It did this several times, until eventually the woman decided to investigate. She found her shed door blocked by a fallen pile of magazines (which very likely explain why someone who had been able to get into the shed might then have found himself unable to leave), and couldn't open it more than a few inches. On the offchance, though, she left a plate of tuna and a bowl of water inside.

This morning, at around the time we were delighted to see Mulder, she checked again, and found the tuna gone and the water depleted. (Whether she's been able to get into her shed properly yet, history does not relate.)

The lady didn't know the white cat, and nor do we (very possibly Mulder does -- I don't know). But, whoever this feline hero was, he or she deserves many, many cat-treats.

Mulder is now recovering, sitting in his favourite places and being stroked and fed (a little at a time, though, to give his system time to get used to it). B. and I (and probably Scully as well) feel very, very lucky to have him back.