And the cat came back ...

Miss Kitty has been gone since last Tuesday and I've been a wreck worrying over her. She's wandered off before for extended periods of time, but she hasn't done this in a very long time. I think all the visitors we had over on the 1st made her mad. This being the Halloween season, I get more angsty than usual about her being outside as a black cat. I also found that describing a black cat to someone who doesn't own one is hard to do. Any distinctive markings? Um, she's all black. She has a luxuriously long tail. There are some scabs on her skin around her neck under her fur. Her fur is more coarse than shiny. She's particularly petite. She meows a lot (I actually wrote that on a piece of paper and gave that to my neighbor). To the casual cat observer, she's just another black cat.

Rich has been very helpful in the cat search. He's been taking walks in the neighborhood and helping me look for her every evening. He even went out with me in the rain with flashlights and slicker jackets for almost an hour for us to look for her one more time. About halfway through the walk, I was losing hope. I just wanted her to come home and she wasn't coming. I was calling kittykittykittykitty all over the neighborhood and shining flashlights in all their shrubbery and under their cars but she was still playing hard to get.

And on the last leg of our trip, as I stood in the middle of the street and let out one last kittykittykittykitty she meowed back in reply. In a flash of soggy black fur, she came tearing across three yards and down the street to jump into my arms. And she was all full of purrs and snuggles and kneading my shoulder.

As recently as two hours ago, I was vowing that if she ever came home she was never going outside again. But given her surly behavior, we'll see how that goes. She's definitely staying inside until after Halloween. So we have three weeks of howling and growling and general kitty cantankerousness.

Miss Kitty gets a stern talking to (1.43MB MP3 - safe for work aside from cat growling)

Nice Pants

I am so pleased with my new pants. All this week, I've been wearing pants that were in the bottom of my bureau to see if I liked any of them or if they were just in there waiting for me to shrink two inches. Every night I've come home and pulled the offending pants off and dump them into the "get out of my house" pile to donate.

This morning I looked at my other pants in the bureau waiting for me to test them out and couldn't go one more day with my bare ankles hanging out for all the world to see while all these new clothes went untouched. So I wore my new stretch twill jeans in a size 14 tall (so many 14 talls in my new clothing selections) and I've been in Pants Heaven all day!

If anything they're a smidge too long. We'll see if they shrink in the wash. Would you believe this is with my legs crossed?! No ankles to be seen here!

Now just to start wearing those long-sleeved shirts that cover my wrists. I may be unbearable at that point.

Make these clothes go away!

Anybody have need for size 14 pants/jeans or size large long sleeve shirts? I've got a ton that are not making the cut this year. If you're under 6 feet tall, you'll be very happy with them, but the jeans I have on now look ridiculous on me because you can see not only my ankles but a good three inches up my calves when I sit down. The shirt sleeves are the same deal in that they're not quite long enough so they drive me crazy. They've got to go. I'll put them on FreeCycle in a few days if no one is interested, but figured I'd give my peeps first dibs.