a full month and Belladonna is still at home...
She goes out sometimes at night, but always is back home by morning. She's regained the weight she had lost; when she came home last March she looked ok, but you could feel her ribs and hips were very prominent under her fur. Now she is solid, with no bones sticking out, and back to her original weight. She also looked exhausted before, but now looks rested and happy. She rubs up against me, purrs, and enjoys being loved on. Sometimes when I come into the barn unexpectedly, I find her out of the tack room and laying in Dahli's hay while Dahli is eating. They are friends again.
In the meantime, I was walking the dogs last week and the neighbors where she had been living were out by their mailbox, so I told them that she had come home.
Turns out she spent the winter under their trailer. The woman, who last fall told me the next time she saw her she'd catch her and bring her back home, told me (in a thin, whiny voice) they kept her there because they "felt sorry for her." 
So she spent a brutally cold winter alone in a dark, damp, dirty dungeon, no vaccinations, no warm, dry bed, no nothing because somehow that was better than being at my place?!?! And they didn't tell me, so left me to wonder and worry and tell myself that they must have taken her into their home so that I wouldn't worry too much. aholes. 
Anyway, I suspect Bella learned to stay away from that side of the road and just stick to her own neck of the woods.
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I have one set to the west that are the best, I mean they would do anything and have rescued my broke down ass a number of times. we are opposites politically but they are GOOD people. the ones to the east? OMG 
I have no idea what their politics are because they are such assholes we have never had a conversation to get that far.
to the south is a sort of wildcat subdivision that includes one pretty good guy and also a cattle thief along with the random rural meth heads and wannabe cowboys.
to the north are mostly OK people and a guest ranch run by a mostly clueless Californian. (you can see her on a couple of episodes of some reality show - Hotel Nightmares or something like that 
)
glad you cat has returned, really returned it sounds like.
