Escape!

Recently we had a rather frightening experience. We were returning from a dinner out and as I pulled the car into the driveway, we noticed Cheecko outside barking at the front door, apparently wanting to be let in. This was disturbing because we don't let our animals outside without supervision, and he had been inside when we left.

I quickly noticed that the screen on one of the front windows had been busted out. The next thought was "oh my god, how many cats are outside?" We found Tass at the front door with Cheecko, doing his normal roll-around-on-the-concrete maneuver, so we got those two inside quickly. Barb closed the window and went to check for missing cats while I went into the back yard. I saw Lucky and called for him; thankfully he came to me and I was able to put him back inside. I didn't find any more outside, but it was difficult since our lawn mower had been broke and the lawn was a bit overgrown. A cat can hide anywhere in that and we wouldn't know.

Back inside, the can opener called ten to the kitchen; we were still missing Oreo, Patches, PJ, and Precious. Cat nip brought out the missing PJ, so were still down three. I began searching the house for the typical hiding places and found Patches behind the bed. We were getting frantic now. Neither Oreo nor Precious had ever been outside, and neither were of the sort to come when you called nor were they keen on being picked up. More searching, inside and out, turned up nothing. Then, as if to claim there was nothing wrong, Precious showed up in the hallway.

Oreo was still AWOL. We tore apart the bed and checked all the "forbidden" rooms to see if he had somehow got closed into a room. We wandered all over the yard, notified the neighbors, and still could not find him. Barb and I were nearly at tears, and visions of Teddy (a feral who was killed on the road) and Lucky kept filling my head. Finally, hours later, Barb caught a glimpse of Oreo in the bedroom. After a bit of coaxing he came out from under the bed, and that was the last missing cat. We're still not sure where he had been hiding, but we are very thankful he is all right.

We learned our lesson. We don't leave the windows when we leave now, except for the ones with the fans in them, and those are only open enough to fit the fan and nothing else.

Chico Free!

I know this is a cat blog, but the biggest event recently has been Chico being neutered. The vet said he had to wear the cone collar for a week, but we just took it off a day early as he's been trying to scratch his neck like crazy. He's all healed up so there doesn't seem to be a problem.
On the cat front, we set up what we thought was a nice small kitty tent last night. Turns out it was a bit bigger than we thought. The cats and Chico had a blast running in and out of it though, so it remains assembled. We put it over the dog crate so they had a platform to jump up on inside it, and they can now peek out of the mesh windows at passers-by as cats so enjoy doing.