I'm telling on her

It's Cat here -- Tabby is sleeping, and I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you what she's been up to. I know she won't.

Tabby is a house cat. She joined the family of me and Maggie, my oversized Sheltie, not quite four years ago. She has established a routine that consists in great part of yelling for food and then yelling at Maggie and me at random.

On occasion, she has decided to take a walk on the wild side and escape out the door when I'm fool enough to give her three inches to slide through. I've started leaving the side door open a foot or so, enough to give her room to come in and not enough for Maggie to get out. Her normal time from escape to sauntering back in is somewhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the weather and if there are neighborhood cats out there.

Last Monday, she made one of her famous escapes. I left the door open ... but no Tabby.
I left it open when I went to bed, but she was still missing on Tuesday morning.

I expected her to be at the door scolding me when I got home from work Tuesday, but again, there was no mad meow. I began to worry.

By the time I climbed in bed Tuesday, I figured she was gone. My daughter, attempting to reassure me, insisted Tabby would come home when she got hungry. Still, I had this sinking feeling that poor Tabby had tangled with a car or gotten beaten up by the tom cat that prowls the neighborhood and I'd never see her again.

I was wrong. She showed up this morning, demanding to be let in and chowing down as if she'd never been fed before. She made a circuit of the house, ensuring that her favorite places hadn't been touched. She sat on the newel post for a minute, then jumped into the window overlooking the driveway and checked out my desk, where she likes to sleep by the keyboard. Satisfied that her haunts were intact, she climbed onto a basket of laundry in my bedroom and curled up to sleep.

And she's still sleeping. I suspect that wherever she was and whatever she did, it wore her out. I'm hoping, too, that the animal control officer doesn't show up tonight with a warrant for her arrest for graffiti on the vet clinic's wall or an order to lock her up for disorderly conduct while high on catnip.

Or if he does, I can bribe him with a copy of Bittersweet, my new historical romantic suspense from Turquoise Morning Press.