About an hour ago, in between two particularly nasty ones, I started hearing something... a repeating plaintive wail coming from the porch, out by the door... and look who we found:
He was somewhat bedraggled, a little scared by the thunder, and VERY hungry.
What we have here is what I'd guess to be a just barely mature tom, grey and black tiger tabby, neutered, with trimmed (or at least relatively short) claws. He's pretty clean, not well groomed (very shaggy, and in need of serious brushing), but has no matting, no mites, no fleas, and no ticks.
He also had no collar, and no marks in his fur indicating he wore one regularly; though a loose collar would both be easy to lose or work off, and leave no marks.
He's very skinny under that fur, and I'd guess he's a couple weeks underfed (and the small game here is plentiful, so if he'd been hunting, he wouldn't be underfed).
Funnily, he's perfectly fine around our three big and inquisitive dogs... and he has to be the most even tempered, least skittish cat I've ever seen in my life. He had no problem whatsoever being immediately picked up by a stranger; in fact he started purring right quick, and kept purring when passed from Mel to me. He didn't hiss at the dogs even when they stuck their noses right in at him... and he went back to purring immediately after the dogs left him alone (Zoe is still being a bit of a pain on that score, but Wash and Jayne are just fine... In fact, Wash, our resident puppycat, seems to like our visitor very much).
So clearly, this is a well socialized, well cared for cat, that someone is probably missing...
We haven't seen any posters around, and no-one local posted anything on craigslist... but we'll put some up tomorrow, check the local free paper and pay paper, call local animal control etc...
And NO, we are NOT keeping him... We've got three dogs already, and that is quite enough thank you... Besides, he almost certainly has someone else who loves him and misses him.
In the meantime... he's just purring his furry little head off.