Kitty Bake

An almost-bad thing happened today.

Our next-door neighbor to the North owns a kitty. Said kitty is actually a fairly nice tiger-striped specimen with a pair of white socks. She's actually a pretty friendly beast, and for whatever reason, she's picked our yard as her preferred hang out.

Now I don't really mind kitty hanging out in my yard. She doesn't seem to do anything particularly naughty, and other than get underfoot when we are outside, she doesn't bother anyone. Every so often, she'll meow at our door asking to be let in, but we always refuse her, since FosterEema is deathly (as in have an asthma attack and go to the hospital) allergic to cats.

So last night, when I heard kitty meowing, I didn't think anything about it. I didn't bother to investigate, because I figured she was meowing to be let in the house.

Fast forward to this afternoon, when our neighbor-to-the-North's daughter stopped by asking if we'd seen their cat. She explained that they had been on vacation and hadn't seen kitty since the weekend. They had already searched the neighborhood and checked at the local pound.

"That's odd you haven't seen her," I said. I explained that kitty had been hanging out in our yard, and she frequently lounged on our lawn. I invited the neighbor's daughter into the yard, and we quickly searched, only to find kitty wasn't there.

I ran through my mental list of when I'd last seen the cat. "I know I heard her meowing last night," I told the waiting teen, "so she must be around. I saw her yesterday, and I saw her on Sunday when our friends were over. On Sunday, our friend's dog chased her out of our yard."

I continued to ponder the problem. Then I remembered that we'd left the garage door open for a period of time on Sunday and Monday. Perhaps the cat was locked inside our detached garage.

I unlocked and opened the door. Sure enough, kitty was in the garage, and she was more than happy to be released, unharmed, from our garage prison.

"Well the good news is she hasn't been in here for very long," I explained. "I'm glad I thought to look!"

The neighbor's teen daughter collected the cat and departed.

I'm glad the girl came looking for her cat when she did. We don't go out into the garage very often, and it's likely we might not have opened the door for several more days. It's been rather warm of late, and we might have opened the garage to a rather unpleasant find.