They went to London to visit the Queen...(and they didn't even bring me a tee shirt!)

I had an interesting night last night....I got home from work and my front door was wide open. Kitties were both gone. I threw my purse inside and went looking for them but I left the front door open in case either one of them came home on their own. When I went outside I saw one of my neighbors standing in her driveway looking under her car. I asked her if she had seen a white or grey kitten. She said that she had seen a white cat but it was hers. She was under the car and she was making a horrible noise. I asked her if she was sure the white cat was hers because I was missing a white cat. I squatted down so I could look under the car and there he was. He was screaming his head off. He was covered in oil and stickers. When I picked him up he clung to me and started purring. I took him home and then went out and looked for Ashleigh. When it got dark I finally gave up and went home. This is when I realized that the door had been locked since I left the house at 7:00 that morning. How my locked door got open allowing the kitties to escape was beyond me, but now my bigger problem was…I was locked out of the house. (All burglars stop reading immediately!) Fortunately I have one window that will not lock when it is shut, so I lugged a ladder out of the shed and got inside the house via the window. My shoes wouldn't slide off of the sill so there I sat with my fanny hanging out of the window. (A pretty picture if I ever saw one.) I had to try to jump. When I leaped down from the window sill I didn’t completely clear the sill and I anticipate a nice bruise on my fanny in the next day or so.

I made up a couple of "Lost Cat" flyers on the only paper I could find. Please tell Martha Stewart that paper plates make fine posters. I used the only marker I could find, a fine point Sharpie.It took me a while to make 3 signs. Lorenzo helped as much as he could and when we were both satisfied with our art work I went out and hung them through out the park. When I got back I put some food* out on the porch, opened all of my windows and lay down on the couch. Lorenzo slept with me for the entire night. This will be the first night since I got him that there hasn’t been an Idiot Olympic time trial competition at 11:00 pm. (These time trials always result in curtain rods getting broken, chairs getting knocked over, water dishes flung across the kitchen, etc.) After a sleepless night of false alarms...I thought I heard Ashleigh a million times...she finally came home at 6:45 this morning. She very politely asked to be let in the house and was very matter of fact about the whole ordeal. She was not dirty or cold, she had no stickers in her fur. She didn't want me to hold her. I tried to tell her how much she made me worry and how happy I was that she was safe and uninjured...but she wasn't in the mood for my soliloquy. Apparently the only reason she came home was because she needed to sit in the bay window. When I left this morning they were both perched in the window and Lorenzo was licking Ashleigh’s face. And that’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it, uh huh, uh huh.

Sweet relief, but boy am I tired.


*footnote: I found IAMS brand canned cat food at Big Lots. It was $8.00 for 16 cans. Bargain? NOT!!! Ashleigh and Lorenzo do not like it. The plate that I left on the front porch wasn't even touched by the neighborhood stray cats. When I get home from work I give them canned food. They run over to it, smell it and look at me like the little boy in the commercial who says, "Are you mad at me?"