Of all the ways to lose a cat

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WASH. — LOST CAT. Has a little bell on her collar. Reward.

When a feline goes missing, the explanations of where she could be are as long as the darkest corridor of the owner's imagination:

High up in a Douglas fir. In the bellies of the coyotes slinking out in the woods. In a ditch, bleeding, after being smacked by a car. Snatched by a bald eagle. (On the island in Puget Sound where I live, wildlife biologists report, a number of cat collars have turned up in eagles' nests.)

There was the time my dimwit Persian, Amanda, lodged herself inside the back of my friend's clothes dryer while I was on vacation, and didn't come out for five days.

And then there is Bess -- whose fate no one could have imagined.

She is the latest in a line of cats I've picked up in my travels as a foreign correspondent.

There was Marie, named after the Bob Dylan song "Absolutely Sweet Marie," an ersatz Siamese I got for $5 from a pet shop in Cairo. She got run through the dryer by my housekeeper in Moscow but lived to a ripe old age.

There was Peter, a ginger tabby who fatally sailed off the eighth-floor balcony of my apartment in Moscow -- as did Mario, my beloved Burmese from Portland, Ore. Katya survived the move from Moscow to London, only to get hit by a bus.

Is it any wonder the Animal Welfare Society in London wouldn't let me adopt a kitten?

I tried to make them understand that although these mishaps had befallen my cats, they were exactly that -- bad luck -- and I basically was a woman who doted on cats, whose cats were adored members of the family, who could offer a cat glorious food, a comfy bed, constant attention, frequent compliments, an annoying number of kisses and plenty of lap time.

No dice.

"Do you have a garden? Because we don't give out cats unless there's an opportunity for them to go out and get some sunshine," the matron at the Hounslow shelter in West London said when she called for my initial home inquiry.

"Oh yes," I assured her.

"But there's a fence? The cat can't get out of the garden?" she asked.

"Well," I said, not wanting to tell her how Katya had met her fate, "we have a very high fence, but I'm not sure it's possible to build a fence a cat can't get over. Is it?"

She moved on. "Do you have a bus route on your street?"

Had someone coached her? "Well, yes, but it's only one bus," I said slowly.