Do Not Leave Your Children with Me

AJ has been in Costa Rica for a week. It’s great for her. It’s fine for me. It’s bad for the cats. They miss her, and I’m largely unsympathetic to their plight, still refusing to share my pudding with Max even though he’s lonely.

Monday night when I came home from work, Max immediately met me at the door and began pleading for attention, which is typical Max behavior. Sasha didn’t appear, which is typical Sasha behavior. After about three hours, though, I still hadn’t seen Sasha and I began to wonder where she was. I looked around and couldn’t find her. I got a little worried. I searched a little harder. Gone. I couldn’t find her anywhere, and I suddenly became certain that I had lost the cat.

Now, the thing is that it’s almost impossible to lose an indoor cat. I’ve already tried to teach Sasha how to open doors, and she’s no good at it. She’s not even interested. Still, I became convinced that in that moment the wind had blown the door open, Sasha must have escaped or possibly when AJ’s sister came to feed and love the cats during the day, Sasha had made a break for it. I was so panicked that I threw on my coat and went downstairs to look around and make certain that the feral cats who live in the next building hadn’t found and eaten Sasha. They had not.

It was Max who finally found Sasha (if a cat that’s not lost can be found). I sat down with him and I instructed him that he should help me out and find Sasha. And he did. A few minutes later he left the room and when he came back about 20 minutes later, Sasha was with him. So we might actually negotiate about the pudding in the future.