Outdoor cats

Last night at around 10:30 while I was watching the Fox Soccer Report our cat Leon, who has turned into quite a nocturnal prowler, dashed across our patio.  Our other cat, Rascal, who was inside, seemed a little excited.  For some reason I thought Leon was being chased.

Now Leon, for some reason, is quite shy and I am only able to pet him when he has been sleep-snuggling with Rascal or in the sun and is in a state which I characterize as "kitty narcosis."  Otherwise, he generally stays away from me.  He was a shy cat even when we were picking him out as a kitten, but Graham insisted that we get him, so I overrode Mary's sensible character-based objections, and we took him home. Despite his shyness, he is very very soft, and sweet.

So I was alarmed when he dashed by in a seeming huff.  Mary and Natalie have much better luck with him, so I had Mary go outside and call him, which she had previously always done successfully.  To no avail.  Even when we tried the generally infallible technique of shaking his food bowl for him, he did not come.  I searched the backyard for him with a flashlight.  No kittie.  I was having visions of one of the neighborhood foxes having noshed him.  At last, Mary went out and searched under our deck, where he likes to hang out, and claimed to have seen his eyes, but he wouldn't come in when she called him when we turned out our lights for the night.

Even accepting the idea that pets are, in the end, a way to teach your children about the inevitability of death and that time heals wounds, it was disconcerting.  I wonder how I will do when Natalie is 16 or so and stays out till 3 am and turns off the ringer on her cell phone.

Leon came meowing by our door at about 4 am.  Mary, of course, had to let him in, lest he decide to run away.