A Moggy for Michael

A Moggy for Michael

Originally published in Reader's Digest and delivered to 40 million readers worldwide in 13 languages across 40 countries. Also featured in Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul.

When ten-year-old Mike Cunningham's cat disappears, he does something most kids wouldn't dare—he calls a pet detective, even though his father says it's a waste of time.

Sam wasn't just a cat. He was a gift from Mike's mother before she died six months earlier. Mike didn't cry at her funeral. He was "brave." But when Sam vanished, that quiet bravery began to crack.

John Keane—America's first pet detective—answers the call. "I've got some money saved up, almost forty dollars. Is that enough?" Mike asks. In three decades as a pet detective, Keane had been offered hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to find missing pets. But no one had ever offered him everything they had. He took the case.

The search unfolds the only way real searches do: shelter visits, posters stapled to telephone poles, long walks through fog-soaked San Francisco streets, and leads that go nowhere. Then a call comes in. A gray tabby. An egg-shaped spot on his chest. Found dead in the bushes near Mike's house.

Some moments force a choice: shut down—or feel everything.

What follows leads Keane and the boy to an eccentric Englishwoman with a house full of cats, a kitchen that smells of boiled fish bones, and grief of her own buried deep. In a cluttered pantry surrounded by "moggies," something unexpected happens—and a boy finally lets himself break.

This is a true story about loss, the courage it takes to feel it, and the unlikely strangers who help us find our way.