Sunday, August 24, 2008
"Cat Drama On the High Seas"
I was just scanning through my man-servant's email, when I found a long message from his wife, about me! I was dubious at first, expecting to find myself misrepresented (as we cats so often are), but it turned out to be a fine telling of a recent episode that truly was scary. Here it is, unedited.
Okay... how's this for "high drama"? Brother Man generally does not go outside of the house, even though we almost always leave our front and back doors open (no A/C). But every once-in-a-while, if a neighbor cat comes up on our porch and Brother Man happens to be awake and alert, he'll run out to chase it away. Well, a few nights ago, Indiana (one of the neighbor cats) walked into our houseboat through the front door, and Brother Man spied him and chased him out the back door! I should point out that they were going at top speed, and we have no railing on our back porch! We saw a flash of white, heard a giant "plunk, splash", and saw bubbles come to the surface. PANIC!
Brother Man ran back around through the front door and hid in the bedroom closet, but Indy was nowhere to be found, so I ran down the dock and knocked furiously on his owners' door. Brent wasn't there, but his wife Jen came running down the dock after me, and by that time, Mark had the flashlight out and was scanning the water, and our neighbor across the dock, Lesley (having come over when she heard all the commotion), was helping to calm him, insisting that cats know how to swim.
Well, we spent a while looking, and didn't see him anywhere, and Mark and I were just feeling terrible. I sent Jen back down the dock to wait for Indy, in case he had found some way to scramble out of the water, and in the meantime Mark and I decided that I should take a flashlight across to the marina to get a look at the underside of our float, where all the logs are, in case he was hiding there. But after seeing all those bubbles, my optimism was lacking.
As I was walking back down the dock to go around to the marina, I saw Jen and Lesley sitting on the dock -- petting Indiana! He wasn't even wet! I called back to Mark, who came outside and said, "well, something fell in the water!" At this point, understanding came over me... "the impatiens!", I yelled. We turned and ran to the back porch, and sure enough, our big ceramic pot of impatiens in bloom, which used to sit on the edge of the porch, was missing, and there were flowers floating on the surface of the water.
Breath of relief. Then laughter. Indy had knocked the bowl overboard in his race to escape Brother Man. They are so lucky that we didn't strangle them both upon finding out everyone was okay!
P.S. Hey Washington, if that was one of your lackies here to give me trouble, you'll have to find tougher that that.
Okay... how's this for "high drama"? Brother Man generally does not go outside of the house, even though we almost always leave our front and back doors open (no A/C). But every once-in-a-while, if a neighbor cat comes up on our porch and Brother Man happens to be awake and alert, he'll run out to chase it away. Well, a few nights ago, Indiana (one of the neighbor cats) walked into our houseboat through the front door, and Brother Man spied him and chased him out the back door! I should point out that they were going at top speed, and we have no railing on our back porch! We saw a flash of white, heard a giant "plunk, splash", and saw bubbles come to the surface. PANIC!
Brother Man ran back around through the front door and hid in the bedroom closet, but Indy was nowhere to be found, so I ran down the dock and knocked furiously on his owners' door. Brent wasn't there, but his wife Jen came running down the dock after me, and by that time, Mark had the flashlight out and was scanning the water, and our neighbor across the dock, Lesley (having come over when she heard all the commotion), was helping to calm him, insisting that cats know how to swim.
Well, we spent a while looking, and didn't see him anywhere, and Mark and I were just feeling terrible. I sent Jen back down the dock to wait for Indy, in case he had found some way to scramble out of the water, and in the meantime Mark and I decided that I should take a flashlight across to the marina to get a look at the underside of our float, where all the logs are, in case he was hiding there. But after seeing all those bubbles, my optimism was lacking.
As I was walking back down the dock to go around to the marina, I saw Jen and Lesley sitting on the dock -- petting Indiana! He wasn't even wet! I called back to Mark, who came outside and said, "well, something fell in the water!" At this point, understanding came over me... "the impatiens!", I yelled. We turned and ran to the back porch, and sure enough, our big ceramic pot of impatiens in bloom, which used to sit on the edge of the porch, was missing, and there were flowers floating on the surface of the water.
Breath of relief. Then laughter. Indy had knocked the bowl overboard in his race to escape Brother Man. They are so lucky that we didn't strangle them both upon finding out everyone was okay!
P.S. Hey Washington, if that was one of your lackies here to give me trouble, you'll have to find tougher that that.
