We have three cats. The oldest one, Boo, is about 16 years old and couldn’t give much of a shit about what’s going on around her if it doesn’t involved a warm, comfortable place to sleep or, occasionally, food. The one in the middle, Scooter, is six or seven and, just like his age, he’s middle of the road when it comes to attitude. He’s very friendly to most people and attentive to what’s going on around him, by which I mean he sticks his nose into everything, even things he shouldn’t be. Especially things he shouldn’t be.
Then there’s Sparky, the kid of the crew. Sparky’s probably the nicest of the bunch, personality-wise, but he’s kinda jumpy. Might have something to do with him being a feral before we adopted him as a kitten. He’s been in our house for going on three years now, but he still jumps at every creak and clunk and sometimes hunkers down under the sofa until he gets the idea it’s safe to come out again.
When we came home from work on Monday night, after taking care of the broken water pipe and things began to settle down a bit, My Darling B fed the cats while I cleaned up some of the mess, and as I was mopping up the mud around the table in the dining room I noticed Sparky wasn’t in his usual spot, gobbling down the kibble B put out for him.
I looked around the room. No Sparky. Didn’t see him in the living room, either. “Have you seen Sparky since we’ve been home?” I asked B, and that’s when she got the puzzled look on her face, too. “No, I haven’t,” she answered, so we went looking for Sparky. I checked all the rooms, the basement, and then started on round two upstairs again. B wandered around calling his name and shaking a bag of treats, but he didn’t emerge. When she wandered into the hallway, though, she froze. “I heard him,” she said, shaking the bag of treats again and calling his name. “Mew,” he called, distantly. He was hiding in the hall closet behind the vacuum cleaner.
Same thing when we came home on Tuesday night: no Sparky. We went through the same routine of calling to him and shaking the bag of treats, and after five or ten minutes of that he came slinking out from behind the refrigerator, trembling. The contractors must have made a lot of noise tearing off the old siding that day. Wednesday night he was behind the fridge again but came out almost right away when we called his name, and he wasn’t quite so scared. I’m not sure, but I don’t believe the contractors were here all day Wednesday because I didn’t see much work done and frankly didn’t expect it: the high temperature that day was twelve degrees.
This Is Drivel 