Feline Abductions

A couple of years ago I managed to convince my mother that she was in danger of becoming a Dog Person and had to get new cat(s). I sourced some adorable kittens - by luck, I hadn't met them before we received them - which were ready for delivery whilst she was on holiday in Norway. Oh no! thought I, I'll have to kitten-sit!

Eventually she came to collect the babies and has been terribly happy with them, although I gather they are still rather suspicious of her demonic hounds delightful doggies. They're very photogenic and behave like cats in all those important ways which dogs don't.

Except that, last Wednesday, Aineko didn't come home. She also didn't return on Thursday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday all saw the house lacking half of its Bastian complement. And so on, until this morning when I received a call from my mother telling me that the wayward beast had wandered out of the barn this morning, miaowing for food. She sounded not so much excited by this, but puzzled - understandably.

You have to understand that this is not a new thing, for her cats to vanish in unusual circumstances.

Frodo, who I only just remember, disappeared for good when I was about five years old. That's reasonably linear, I suppose. He was mostly renowned for his fabulous eyeliner.

Rover, during the summer holidays on year, got trapped in one of the school buildings across the road from us; we only found him, after about a week, because there were workman around and we wandered across the road and heard him miaowing. A hurried search for a janitor led to a released cat and a Very Happy Ally.

Charlotte went twice; once she got trapped behind the cooker of our downstairs neighbour - which went unnoticed for a while - and another time she managed to slip under the floorboards of the other downstairs neighbours. On that occasion I happened upon her yowling behind a grille in the wall on one of my regular Charlotte-searches (heh heh sounds like Charlotte Churches).

B.B. (originally to be named Bilbo Baggins but he came out female - go figure!) definitely takes the biscuit though. We lived on the first floor and behind out flat there was a flat roof, which the cats used to like wandering around on. One day B.B. didn't come back in. Notices were places around Marchmont, but there was no sign of her. We had long given up hope when, six weeks later (or five weeks, there is some debate), my mother heard a pitiful mewling sound from the bathroom window one morning. Lo and behold! B.B. returns to the very place from whence she had vanished. Much much thinnner than before (but she was always a bit porky) but not dead!

So Aineko is merely following in the pawprints of her predecessors. My mother has some very odd cats...