Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Thursday, Jul. 08, 2004 - 11:59 p.m.

The cat is already out to prove she owns me.

See, last night - around 11:00pm, she decided to go for a stroll somewhere out in the dark, dark neighborhood. Which would be fine, except that there are things like hungry coyotes, with great big slavering jaws o' death, and horned owls, with sharp, sharp talons and great big tearing beaks o' death, and loose dogs and fast-moving cars. Which, okay, the dogs and cars I'm sure are not so much the big threat at 11pm, but the owls and coyotes, are. But I told myself, it's okay, she's a cat, she knows what's what, she'll be back, except that I figured having posted her picture and all, I'd pretty much jinxed it, and she was NOT coming back, she was indeed serving as a tasty meal for some ravenously vicious asshole owl at that very minute.

Needless to say, I was rather anxious.

But I decided being neurotic wasn't going to help matters any, gave her up for dead*, and went back inside.

*(Not really; that was just for dramatic effect. But lest you think I am a paranoid freak, I should explain for those of you who live elsewhere that an alarming number of smallish household pets go missing to wild animals each and every year here in Southern California. Indeed, it is a regular occurrence, and anyone who keeps pets under probably 30 lbs. and which hang outside at night has pretty much lost at least one to predators.)

About an hour later, as I was brushing my teeth, there came this gawdawful squawk from outside, definitely the sound of either a) a very pissed-off cat, or b) a cat being snagged by a great horned owl, or c) the very weird hunting sound a great horned owl makes when it has something in its sights and wants to flush the tasty morsel out of hiding and into the open, where it can be snagged up and torn apart by great big, black, scythe-like, bloodstained claws.

You can pretty much tell how this was going, can't you?

Hey - I never claimed to be a calm non-worrier. I am not a calm non-worrier. I am a sort of calm, very anxious total worrier. To put it more succinctly, I fret. A lot. While I tap things. Rapidly.

Anyway, I hear this sound, so me and TB go out to see what it is, because he is in agreement, it was not really a sound one hopes to hear when one's newly acquired furry friend is missing. So I grab the flashlight, and we shine it around in the direction of the sound and don't see much of anything but empty field, so TB goes back inside and I shine the light over to my left, and what should I see but The Queen of Sheba herself, come stalking up the hill all "what?" I was reasonably relieved, but the only way for her to get back to us was to go all the way around the fence line, which is quite a long way, in this big field with absolutely no grass cover of any kind, so I was terrified the owl was going to get her. But she started on her way around while I stood at the top of the hill and waited, and then she apparently either decided she didn't know how to get back to our side, or that she just didn't want to go that far, doubled back to the bottom of the hill on the wrong side, and then stood there meowing at me to help her. Loudly. So I spazzed, because jeez, cat, why don't you advertise where you are to every predator in the area, so I started to climb over the fence, but it's a pretty high fence, so it was more than a little difficult, not to mention it was in the dark, and you try scaling a fence at night while carrying a gigantically heavy maglite, all while a little cat constantly scolds you for how long it's taking. I tore a nice jag in one finger, and it became apparent the climbing thing really wasn't going well and might not be such a good idea, so I decided instead to lift her up and pull her thru the wider opening at the top of the locked gate.

A brilliant idea, until one tried to put it into execution.

What actually happened was the cat got fairly pissed off, which is to be expected when one grabs a cat one scarcely knows and tries to hoist her into the air with one hand thru a crack in a fence. She tried to twist away and gave an exceedingly put out meow, which caused me to rather frustratedly answer her with "Roooooo," which somehow communicated to her that maybe she should just go along with things, at which point she went utterly boneless and just hung from my grasp, which is the one and only time so far she has actually felt like she weighed anything at all. So there was a certain amount of sweaty, struggly, mostly one-handed cat juggling going on, while all the while she hung there and shot me a look which unequivocally said "you are an idiot and I don't like you very much right now, but thanks anyway".

Once I got her on my side of the fence, I hugged her for a moment, which she tolerated, and then when I set her down, she shot up to the top of the hill faster than spit, without so much as a "thank you very much for rescuing my lazy ass and doing damage to your person," and that was the end of that.

She is, this very night, off repeating the adventure. I am staying inside.

Peace out,
Katie

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