Wednesday, July 05, 2006

The ups and downs of a holiday weekend

I’ve been reading quite a few cat related posts recently so I thought I’d join in… you see, my cat of about 14 years, Morticia, who hasn’t really been outside farther than the front porch in about 8 years, decided to sneak out Saturday afternoon. Neither of us saw her and can’t figure out how she got out but she did. To make matters worse, neither of us noticed until Sunday morning as we’re reading the paper and drinking coffee. She looks at me and says “when’s the last time you saw the cat?” I had no idea, some time Saturday afternoon I think. We do the whole house search thing and nothing. I remembered that I had ice cream the night before and Morty didn’t bother me at all. Usually she’s right in my face as soon as I sit down with a bowl.

So, I grab Delaney, who, inside the house, can find Morty in 2 seconds, and we head outside. Scouring the neighborhood (with a brief stop for Delaney to play with a giant ball in the neighbors back yard) and calling “hereeeee kitty kitty kitty” resulted in nothing. I made small posters and we went around and put them up on all the light poles. I figured someone had to have seen her but no calls Sunday or Monday. There is a barn across the street, I figure she’s gone over there to hunt. To make matters a little worse, Saturday night there were fireworks followed by a thunderstorm. My poor little 6 lb, 14 year old black cat with no front claws and who does not go outside, is lost, shivering, hungry, cold and afraid…

I don’t sleep very well Sunday night. You see, in the past 2 weeks I have yelled at her constantly, threatened to have her put down, threatened to throw her in the river, etc. She has been crapping in the basement wherever she wants (typically where I am working on my basement finishing project) despite my keeping her litter box perfectly clean. It’s been driving me nuts. So now I’m blaming myself for her “running away from home”.

Tuesday comes and now I’m thinking she’ll never come home but I have one last idea. After mowing the lawn again I decided I would clean up the basement, empty her cat box and put everything away. If she acts like life generally does when I do stuff like that she’ll come back the minute I’m done. So, I clean up everything and throw away the old litter and take the garbage out. Nothing… I head back into the house and realize I forgot to take off my lawn mowing shoes so I quickly spin around and go back into the garage and she’s standing right there! She’s probably lost another pound and looks pretty scrawny but she doesn’t seem to be hurt or anything. I took her back inside and called in Cdubya and we gave her some food and water (she was quite hungry after 3 days).

We went out later and bought her a collar and name tag. We never really worried about that before but she never really tried hard to get out before either. Better safe than sorry.

I went back down a little while later and set up a fresh cat box for her. This morning I went downstairs and there’s a big pile of crap in the middle of my work area… grrr, I’m going to take her to the river…



On the golf front, we went out Monday morning and I played like shit and shot a 94 (46/48). Couldn’t hit the driver straight for some reason and I kept doing stupid things on top of stupid things so I had a 9 and an 8 on par 4’s after hitting into the trees.
Later that day we went to some friends’ house for a bbq. Grabbing a bottle of beer I couldn’t find a bottle opener. Dr. Mike finds a corkscrew with the bottle opener/can opener on it. Unfortunately I hook the bottle opener under the lip of the bottle, not just the cap. Of course, it doesn’t want to come off easily so I wrench the fucker until the top of the bottle shatters in my hand… I tell Mike “oh crap” and he’s like “what the fuck did you do now?” (I have a history of these types of things). I say “wait for the blood…” and a couple seconds later, there it is, pouring all over the counter. Pretty good gash on my right index finger and its gushing blood. We can’t really get it stopped so we throw a band-aid on it and wrap it in duct tape to keep the pressure on. It was still bleeding Tuesday when the band-aid came off. Probably should have had some stitches… oh well. At least my tetanus shot is up to date.

4 comments:

Rod said...

When we moved to our new house next to the woods we left Blake in the back yard.

Of course that was July 1 and firecrackers freak him out and he ran off.

We freaked - new place and we were sure he was lost.

About 3:00 in the morning we heard his collar jungeling and he was in the back yard like nothing happened.

Later we heard stories that people saw him walking down the sidewalk a few blocks away, just minding his own business, on a mission.

adubya said...

Dogs seem to know enough to stick to the sidewalk and their sense of smell is something we just can't comprehened.
Cats, on the other hand, do not walk on the sidewalk, do not walk up to strangers, but do hide under decks, in bushes, under cars, in old barns, etc.
Of course, Mike is telling me that she's old so she just ran away to die. What a great friend...

D said...

Glad Morty is all right. I always hated when any of my pets disappeared. And now with Brody, when he runs off I walk around calling him until I get pissed off and say that I'm better off with out him. Then he magically shows back up and and I pick him up and sling him around like a freakin' puppy again.

adubya said...

I hear ya. Just when you give up and tell yourself it's not that big a deal they show up. I guess it's their way of reminding us that yes, we do want them around.