Escape

Our doors don't latch well but we're usually very careful with Soca. Then on Friday, Soca snuck out after Ruth Anne and Mehri. When I went to help my Russian teacher with her coat after our lesson, the front door was open but the screen was closed. Hmmm... I went all through the house calling him. Then I walked all around the house calling him. No cat. I left the door open, figuring he'd get hungry and coming yowling.

Around lunch after I'd vacuumed and had the extra tables delivered and done everything else that was better without a cat underfoot I started to get worried. I told Mehri that I couldn't find him and she told me that one of our neighbors had told her that a cat had run into their house. She called the neighbor and I talked to her on the phone. My neighbor said she thought the invading cat was leaner than the stray that usually hangs around but had been disconcerted when he streaked into her house that she hadn't thought about it being Soca. She had thought she'd chased it out once, then it reappeared, only to disappear again somewhere that neither she, nor the nanny, nor the toddler, nor the Russian teacher who'd gone to her house after mine, nor her husband who had come home from lunch had been able to discover. I promised to come call for him in her house after I got Ruth Anne down for her nap. By then, the neighbor's nanny had spied the cat behind the water distiller. "Does he hide there in your house?" they asked me. "No, he's not even allowed to go there!"

On Saturday, after the Burns' party, including Joe, had migrated back to Michael and Maria's, I let Soca out of the upstairs bedroom we're he'd been confined. I then worked on putting RA to bed and putting away the extra food. I called Joe and Michael to come get what wouldn't fit in our fridge. As he was about to walk out the door, Joe said, "You can let Soca out now." "I let him out already." Joe blanched and admitted that they'd left the door open while gathering food. I started calling him in the house. I went to the back door to call into the yard and then I saw that the back door had been left open by some of our guests who had gone outside for a break in the middle of dinner. Since I couldn't leave Ruth Anne alone in the house I called Joe and after a long time calling without success and looking for a flash light, we finally saw him in the yard, and double-teamed him back into the house.