Boomerang Kitty

This morning Newkitty ran away. I took it out with me for some air when I went to get the mail, and halfway there it jumped off my shoulder, and bounded back up towards the north steps to the back porch. It looked back at me, miaowed pitifully three times, and then disappeared down the steps on the other side and vanished. I searched everywhere - all round the house and even underneath it - but NewKitty had gone. I was pissed off - I had played baroque recorder sonatas to this cat. Didn't our time together mean anything?

Of course I wondered if I had been locking up the cat against its will. Perhaps it had an owner some place (it's definitely not a wild cat: it's front paws have been declawed) it has been desperate to get home to. But we had opened doors for it, and invited it to go outside several times, and each time the cat had refused. It just didn't add up.

By nightfall, after having made several excursions into the woods in the snow, banging NewKitty's supper dish with a teaspoon, I had given it up as a bad job and assumed it was probably somewhere in West Virginia by now. But then, at 6pm, as I was standing by the french windows in the basement, a little face pressed itself against the window: New Kitty, the amazing Boomerang Cat.


* * *

For everyone who knows I was working on a writing a case for the Arthur Page Society competition in December, I heard today that my case won the first prize. Not the grand prize, but the one below that. Like the Premiership and the First Division. The First Division may not be where the mega bucks are, but it's a hell of a lot better than non-league football.

http://www.awpagesociety.com/newsroom/2005cases.asp