The Great Escape

On Wednesday evenings I attend the local Spiritualist Church Circle, where we meditate and attempt to contact those that have passed over. I arrive home from this at around ten o’clock and usually Middle daughter is asleep. Last night was just a little different as when I opened the door three of the house cats met me with pitiful expressions. (This is not entirely unusual as I frequently have one meet me with reproach for daring to leave them alone) This time however there was a general air of “It wasn’t my fault”.

I placed my bag down in the hallway and started to take out some bits and pieces when the door to youngest daughter’s room creaked open and the thunder of size six feet descended the stairs with Middle daughter attached. She had the look of someone who has been through a major crisis and I was suitably alarmed. “I can’t find one of them”, she said. (This is also not unusual so I was puzzled at her concern).

“I found Batman half way down the stairs,” she continued, “and Mini me was in my bedroom. Also two of the Tuxedo’s were in the bathroom with the Tabby.” It seems that Angel decided to have an evening out as well and in her absence the tribe decided to check out some more suitable territory. Kittens had streamed out of their room and over the entire upper floor. (Not to mention down the stairs into house cat territory). The problem with this adventure is that they are still only half tame and also extremely willful. Scare tactics had worked on Batman and to some extent on the others and she had lured those unresponsive to fear with their favourite toy, however one of the Tuxedo’s was missing.

As I originally had a much larger area to contain my many pastimes the small bedroom at this house is packed full of boxes and bags containing bits that seemed to be of great importance once upon a time. I have been thinking of sorting through these at some future point when there was less for me to do like watching CSI or chatting on the telephone, so to find one small and largely black kitten in amongst a badly constructed pyramid of belongings was not something that I could swear to being keen on. We checked the usual places that furry bodies liked to sleep in and found no extra kittens. I sat in the room until Angel returned in the hope of getting them to come out and play en masse but this too turned up no extra Tuxedo bodies. Eventually I crawled off to sleep.

This morning all the monsters were there bright eyed and bushy tailed. I begin to suspect that they are deliberately toying with us. I await the arrival of Youngest daughter next week with some satisfaction as she can throw her energy into catching them and I can retire to the forest for some gentle tree dismantling.