Under the Arch

I had a bad feeling in the middle of the afternoon, but shook it off as pms induced paranoia. When I returned home, however, there were no meows at the door that demanded attention, and no curious creature came when I called. Hello, panic.

My cat is an escape artist. She regularly demands the freedom of my balcony for the stalking of birdies and lording her magnificence over the neighbors. Though I usually keep the screen door to the balcony securely latched, I must have , in my hurry to get out the door that day, forgotten to check it, and my curious and quite fearless kitty pushed it open so that she could sun herself.

As clever as she thinks she is, returning to the safety of the apartment is not something she has mastered. (There is nothing funnier than a quiet “mew” and a lone feline leg streeeetching through the crack left by a partially open door that won’t quite open wide enough for said cat’s head.) So, I can imagine the hours stretched on as I refused to return to open the stubborn door that came between her and her food bowl, and the mounting frustration as no one came to her rescue. What I’m NOT sure of, is how she managed to get down from a second story balcony with nothing more to show for it than a scratch on her nose.

After a fruitless search of the immediate neighborhood, and questioning of two neighbors too drunk to remember the conversation later, my housemate spotted her crouched in some brush in the backyard, which I had to crawl into and drag her back out. An hour later, we were still ignoring each other, both steamed at the worry we had caused each other.

Damn cat.