The owner of a missing¹ cat is asking for help. "My baby has been missing for over a month now, and I want him back so badly," said Mrs. Brown, a 56-year-old woman. Mrs. Brown lives by herself in a trailer（拖车） park near Clovis. She said that Clyde, her 7-year-old cat, didn't come home for dinner more than a month ago. The next morning he didn't appear for breakfast either. After Clyde missed an extra-special lunch, she called the police. When the policeman asked her to describe Clyde, she told him that Clyde had beautiful green eyes, had all his teeth but was missing half of his left ear, and was seven years old and completely² white.

 

She then told the officer that Clyde was about a foot high. A bell went off. "Is Clyde your child or your pet?" the officer suspiciously³ asked. "Well, he's my cat, of course," Mrs. Brown replied. "Lady, you're supposed to report missing PERSONS, not missing CATS," said the irritated⁴ policeman. "Well, who can I report this to?" she asked. "You can't. You have to ask around your neighborhood or put up flyers," replied the officer. Mrs. Brown figured⁵ that a billboard⁶ would work a lot better than an 8x11 piece of paper on a telephone pole⁷. There was an empty billboard at the end of her street just off the interstate（州际的） highway⁸. The billboard had a phone number on it.

 

She called that number, and they told her they could blow up a picture of Clyde (from Mrs. Brown's family album) and put it on the billboard for all to see. "But how can people see it when they whiz by on the interstate?" she asked. "Oh, don't worry, ma'am, they only whiz by between 2 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. The rest of the day, the interstate is so full of commuters that no one moves." They told her it would cost only $3,000 a month. So she took most of the money out of her savings⁹ account¹⁰ and rented the billboard for a month. The month has passed, but Clyde has not appeared.

 

Because she has almost no money in savings, Mrs. Brown called the local newspaper to see if anyone could help her rent the billboard for just one more month. She is waiting but, so far, no one has stepped forward.

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