While the
dogs prefer eating after dark (cause after a hot day of napping, Pyrs come to
life at night), the challenge it poses to the rest of my family (namely Boo,
the cat) is me not tripping up… Black cat. Dark night. One missed catch on a
door and you can wind up to the electric bolt I woke up to this morning when,
walking past a window and seeing a black furry creature around back of your
house, you do a double take.
First
(lazy) reaction: Oh, look. There’s Leo… (my neighbor’s cat, who is likewise
black and sometimes visits). Second reaction (the one that came with a bolt):
Oh Wait. That neighbor moved! That’s not Her cat. Holy crap. That's MY cat!
5:30 am -- I dash to open the garage door, praying Boo will be so relieved to see me
he’ll come running. (Who am I kidding? Boo’s a cat. Even if he
wanted to come towards me, he’s gonna be ticked and scared having been locked
out all night. Even “I’ wouldn’t run to greet me right now.)
On top of this, the sound of the opening garage door sends Boo darting past the shed, startled senseless by the unexpected
noise that ripped against the silence of his dawning country morn.
“Here kitty,
kitty” is useless. After all, it’s
Boo…who comes when he wants and who has never been outdoors outside of in my
arms…Boo, who is dangerously close to a wood pile that's home to at least
one snake and God knows what else. Whether
they'll fight or whether the snake will eat him…these are the images flashing in my head. Regardless what triggers it, I’m well aware of the damage
snakes can do to four-footed critters.
Drastic times call for drastic
measures…
Quick!
Grab
the Meow Mix!
I race for
that all too familiar canister…the one Boo lives to knock off the counter when I
sleep past his breakfast …The one he recognizes by color, shape and that heavenly sound of kibbles hitting kibbles, or better yet, kibbles hitting his bowl…It’s the call
of the wild for a cat named Boo.
Two shakes
of the mix and voila~ Boo bolts from the woodpile and races to me like a puppy.
Aloof can come later. Right now I’ve startled him out of his kitty-shock. "Meow Mix...Do I see Meow Mix?"—fish-shaped bits for a beast in search of prey.
I scoop him
up and for a good 3 minutes just hold him while thanking God repeatedly. In all
seriousness, this could’ve been a disaster. This is no laughing matter, after
all, Boo in all his fattened glory would’ve made an ideal midnight snack for
any of the many predators that cross my yard on any given night. For this very
reason have I left Boo’s claws in tact (much to the chagrin of my furniture). Much as I’d like nice furniture, I decided
what I liked more was knowing my critter had a fighting chance if ever, by
accident, he slipped outside…
As to how
he GOT outdoors…well that one’s a mystery. My best guess is when feeding goats
and puppies last night, he slipped past me when I wasn’t looking. Against the
backdrop of a black sky, a black cat can go unnoticed. Hard to say…Furthermore,
I have to come to grips with the fact that I’ll never know.
What I do
know is that Boo is now safely inside…Curiosity really can kill a cat, which must be why God gave 'em 9 lives.
As for Boo, we're at 8 and holding...(and holding and holding).
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