Christmas 2011 brought its own miracle to Suffolk on Bennett’s Creek.

Robert Holt and his daughter, a softball player, were in their Turnstone Drive backyard Sunday practicing her pitching when the breeze blew a strange noise in from the creek.

“It sounded like a shore bird,” Holt said.

They walked out onto the dock and looked at their neighbor’s dock, but couldn’t see very clearly. Holt’s wife thought she spied something on one of the dock’s pilings and went to get a pair of binoculars.

“Sure enough, it was a cat hanging on there for dear life,” Holt said.

Holt went to retrieve a fishing net and raced to the dock, but his neighbors had fished the cat out of the water by the time he got there.

“Cats don’t swim too much,” Holt said. But amazingly, this cat was able to paddle its way back to the dock so that he could scoop it out of the water.

His neighbors brought the cold, wet, muddy cat into the warm house, rinsed off the mud and wrapped it in a towel. Holt took pictures and made a few fliers to put up in the area. Despite the fact that the water temperature was in the 40s, Holt estimated, the cat seemed to recover.

“It’s not feral,” Holt said. “I would hope that the cat belonged to somebody around here, and it got away and somehow fell into the water. The tide was running out at the time, so I figure it fell into the creek somewhere south of me.”

The cat, which Holt believes is an older female cat, now is staying at the neighbor’s house until they are able to find a home for it.

“We have rescued a lot of cats and dogs over the years and end up keeping them, but we can’t keep this one,” Holt said. “Nothing would make me happier than to find this cat’s home after Christmas.”

If you recognize the cat, call Holt at 272-6368.