Dave was out of town this week, leaving late Tuesday night after helping to get the kids in bed. He was supposed to have gone Monday, but it was postponed, and his coming through the door at dinnertime Monday was a very welcome surprise. But he did go Tuesday night, and I didn't get to bed until very late. About thirty minutes after drifting off to sleep, I was awakened by the sound of our cat, Mr. Tumnus, wailing loudly from the front bathroom. Backtrack: when we moved, we brought two cats with us, and after a couple weeks of trying them out as inside cats, we (I) decided that they were going to have to take their chances outside. In Gray Court, they were perfectly at home, roaming freely, but also spending a fair amount of time on our porch or in the yard (or even following us on our walks - it was so funny!); since coming here, however they've never seemed to feel comfortable, and we 've seen little of them. One went on a "roaming," as we call it, about three weeks ago and didn't come back, and we have thought the same of Mr. Tumnus on several occasions, but Tuesday evening when we were all enjoying the last hour or so of daylight, we saw him in the front yard, and Dave and I agreed that we would de-flea him and give him another run inside, for the kids' sake. We put him in the bathroom for the night, in order to keep him out of mischief while he adjusted to being back in the house, and he made nary a sound until after I fell asleep, which brings me back to my story and the wailing. After a few minutes of it, I let him out, whereupon he began cruising the house meowing all the more and eventually waking up Chase, who was delighted and wanted to play with the cat. I wanted to escort Mr. Tumnus outside immediately, but I knew the kids would be sorely dissapointed, so I bore with it the best I could, managing to coax Chase back to sleep and thereafter savoring the little sleep I could that night.
I thought Wednesday would thus be a very hard day, but we actually fared well enough, the only incident worth mentioning occuring when I was feeding all the outside animals. Chase was with me in the rabbit barn, but when I stepped into the shed to get some feed (I'm serious - I wasn't gone much longer than it took me to type it), I came out and discovered him all the way up the step-ladder and half-way into the trampoline. This is why I can't get anything done these days! We did make it through thr rest of the day, however, even getting through Drew's soccer practice and then Awanas that night. It was another late night, both for the kids as well as for me, and after cleaning up the kitchen, folding some laundry, and collapsing on the couch ,I eyed the restless-looking Mr. Tumnus. He meowed plaintively at me, and I decided I couldn't take another night like the previous one, and that there thus was nothing to do but let him out for the night. He departed gladly, with not a single regret on my part. I knew, however, that Aimee, who had definitely been obsessing over him since we let him inside, would be furious upon discovering his absence, so I wrote her a note explaining that I had let him out, but that he could come in the next day - also asking her to wait until I woke up in the morning before she "discussed" it with me. I taped it to her alarm clock and went to bed...only to be awakened at 2:30 by a tearful, indignant Aimee demanding to know why I had let him out. "Didn't you read the whole note?" I asked. Well, she "just..couldn't...bear...it..." So we ended up having the discussion in the middle of the night anyway. :-) She calmed down, however, and agreed to go back to sleep, after which it seemed everyone slept very nicely.
I am going to put the rest in a separate post, to help prevent extreme eye-glazing...
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