... but the cat came back. It just wasn't on the very next day. Or the next day. Or the next day.
While we were skylarking all dank, dreary weekend at the beach, he decided the rules (like being home before dark) didn't apply. The pet sitter called and searched, but nothing. We weren't really worried - he's got this odd sub-routine that makes us wonder if he's really, really deep or just simple. Something seems to click off and he goes into his own furry world, oblivious to everything but the iterations of the loop in his code.
But when we got home, he hadn't been seen for 24 hours, and Sunday turned into Monday, turned into Tuesday - and we gave up hope. I'd poked under bushes and peered into sheds, always fearing I'd find a puff of orange fur - wanting to know what happened, but dreading what I'd see.
The other two boys were, meanwhile, needier than they'd ever been - following us everywhere, refusing to go outside without us, and acting as if they hadn't slept since we left. I thought of the matriarch in "Cold Comfort Farm", who took to her bed after she "saw something nasty in the woodshed".
And then Bill came up the stairs this morning carrying the big orange doofus, who's a little slimmer (no harm there!) and VERY glad to see us. He's overfilling my lap right now, making me S-T-R-E-T-C-H to reach the keyboard, and making me type one-handed when he's too relaxed. I think his bones melt and he starts to ooze - and at 17 lb., that could be a real mess!
We'd been trying to console ourselves that at least we still had two cats, but we felt like the mother in Father Fox's Pennyrhymes,
I have seventeen children, and none can I spare.
