Romeo

This is my Mom's funny Romeo story. Romeo is her lard-ass cat. He is totally pathetic (and slightly loveable).


So yesterday, I had two loads of stuff to unload
from the trunk of the
car. The backseat was still split half
down/half up from the ski trip
at Christmas.

Right after the second load was up, you called.
After that, I caught
the weather report (winter storm today, but it
looks like it's going
north of us), read, watched some TV, talked to
Ken from SAlisbury, and
surfed the net.

Till bedtime. I went up to the bedroom and
noticed an absence--Romeo.
Generally, he's perched in the middle of my bed
(the warmest place in
the house) unless he hears food rattling around.

Hmmm. YOu know, I hadn't seen him since I came
in.

Looked under the bed--no Romeo. Went up to the
loft, his second favorite
place to stay--no Romeo.

OK, now a conversation I had ran through my
mind. While at the grocery
store, I had run into Mark, my next door
neighbor. He mentioned that
he'd noticed my door open and had closed it for
me. I thanked him
--couldn't get a real sense of WHEN this had
happened-Mark is
delightful, but there's more than a little old
hippy about him. Time
seems irrelevant to him--and told him that I'd
added some
weatherstripping to the door, and it was hard to
get completely closed.

So he might have gotten outside. I checked the
deck. No Romeo, and as
we'd had some snow, I could see that there
weren't any catpaw tracks.
Checked the front--no Romeo.

Well, maybe he had sneaked into the garage
somehow and hid. I went to
the garage. No Romeo. I heard a miaow, but Iggy
was at the door, trying
to get into the garage.

Made the entire round again, a little more
frantic. Bedrooms. No. under
the beds. No. Loft. No. Closets. No. Deck. No
footprints. Front. No.
Garage again. Wait. There's miaowing, but it's
muffled. what the fuck????

Then I saw him. In the car.