gone missing

Yesterday, I was very unhappy.

The cat had gone missing.

Usually she's ready to come in around midnight but Tuesday evening Emma went out and I went to bed early. I expected to find her sitting outside one door or another in the morning which is where she waits til we get up when she has spent the night outside.

Only yesterday morning she was nowhere to be found and did not come when called. OK, no biggie. She's not shown up right away before.

By 11 AM I've put on long pants, shoes and socks, a long sleeved shirt and I am wading through the poison ivy in the wild space calling and looking for my cat.

You have to understand that this required an incredible act of stupidity bravery on my part as I am highly allergic to poison ivy. Even though it's been since early adulthood that I have been afflicted, I still remember how awful it is.

Living as we did in a woodsy area, there was probably not a single year that I didn't get a whopping case of poison ivy on my feet, legs and arms. At least I did until I finally learned how to identify it. Now, I can zero in on it at 20 paces.

My last big whopping case of it as a young adult was managed through pure stupidity on my part (no bravery involved here). I was living in a different wooded area and decided I would pull up the poison ivy growing in the vicinity, big thick well-established ropes of poison ivy. But, you see, I was wearing gloves.

After that I totally got it about poison ivy.

So back to the cat.

Didn't find her in the wild space and checked the streets and ditches with no sign of her and I needed to get to work. Surely she would show up but by 2 PM, still no cat. 4 PM, no cat. 6 PM, no cat. Now I'm convinced that something bad has happened. If she could have gotten home, she would be home already. The longest she had ever stayed out before was about 12 hours. At 6 PM it was only an hour or so from being 24 hours. She'd have been hungry long before now and would have come home.

Yes, I know, this a cat we're talking about. One who had proved her skills as a huntress by gifting me with assorted mice and voles over the years.

About an hour later I was standing at the back door gazing out into the yard at large trying not to give into my negative feelings and not entirely succeeding when I turned and went out the garage door and just gave her an unemphatic call. Not 5 seconds later, much to my relief, she came tearing out from around the back end of the new shop building, cutting a beeline to the gate of the fenced little back yard with all her hair standing on end as if she was being chased by the devil.

Naturally, I followed after especially since she didn't even spare me a passing glance, me who had just been shedding a tear over her demise.

I picked her up and carried her in, fur all filled with sticky grass seed and totally unrepentant, the whole time she's craning her neck behind looking to see if 'it' was still after her. Satisfied, she trotted off to her food dish.

Feed me.

I never did see what she was running from, (though later I did see the german shepherd, the one that got in the turtle pond, at the back of the property sniffing around) I don't know where she was all that time, but today, at least, she's been sticking pretty close to home.

The other thing about yesterday is that, while I was spending so much time outside looking around and listening for distress signals, I noticed several other things.

Like the small hawk that seems to be building a nest in the top of the pecan tree closest to the garage/shop.

Like the immature crow who was hanging out in the raintree. It was nearly as big as a full grown crow but didn't have any tail feathers to speak of and it didn't seem all too sure of itself. It's little 'Mama' cry sounded more like a bawling calf than a caw.

Like the little bunny family grazing on my neighbor's back half acre in front of the wild space 'tree' line. Two adults and a baby. Bunnies. Not the jack rabbits with their long ass ears and their long ass legs that we used to scare up when I was a kid living in that woodsy place.

So even though I feared the worst for my poor kitty, there was pleasure to be had in the other creatures around me.