I should have named her Houdini

Greg went to be really early on Tuesday night. I stayed up and did some stuff around the house(laundry, dishes, dogs out to potty) and then went to bed at my usual time (8:00). Cleopatra didn't come in the bedroom to sleep like she usually does, but I didn't think much of it.

Wednesday morning she didn't come in to shower with me. Okay, this was getting weird. She always does one or the other. Maybe she's in with Greg? No. After I did a quick search of all her favorite spots downstairs I realized she wasn't in the house anywhere - not even in the hall closet (where I tend to shut her in a lot). My heart sunk to my toes. I frantically searched my memory to figure out when I saw her last and to figure out where she might be. Stupidly, I opened the back door and looked out into the dark and empty yard. My mind was going a thousand miles a minute while I tried to form some plan for finding her, hoping against hope she wasn't a furry manhole cover on the busy road.

Feeblely, and without much hope, I called her name. "Cleo! Cleo-cat!" I thought I heard a faint tinkle of a bell. I called again. Two seconds later I hear it again and know I'm hearing a bell on a collar. In less than a minute Cleo is back in the house and eating out of her food bowl, acting like she hasn't eaten for a month and looking reproachfully at me for making her stay outside all night. Like it was all MY idea!

How that cat manages to sneak out all the time is beyond me. I put a bell on her and I always watch the door when I let the dogs in and out because she likes to sneak out between them. I swear I should have named her Houdini.

I can't figure out why she keeps trying to sneak away. She has her nice box with a heating pad that she loves. We can hardly drag her out of it some days. Must be because of her early formative years out in Promentory Park.

We'll be doing a bed check each night from now on, making sure all the two and four legged members of this family are safely in the house at night.