Copy Cats and Washing Machines

This has been a strange week and it might get even stranger as it goes along.  After all, it is only Wednesday.

There is a cat missing in our neighborhood.  Signs with pictures are everywhere around town, on our neighborhood site and up and down the bike path.  There is a $500.00 reward for this cat's return...our only problem at our house is that it looks exactly like our tortoiseshell cat, Patch.  Same age.  Same sex.  Same color.

This missing cat looks so much like our cat, that I had to do a double take.  I actually had to do more than a double take:  I had to analyze the picture while staring at our cat! 

This brought to mind a book that I read to the kids when they were little.  It was by Barbara Abercrombie and called  Charlie Anderson.  It is about a cat that lives at two houses, one during the day and one at night.  Neither family knew that they were in fact sharing a cat.  It had me thinking...

However, if you looked really closely, the cats were not a match.  However, I was looking with the trained eye of the owner, not as a person on the bike path hoping to make 500 bucks.  This did not occur to me to worry about until my husband chimed in and told me to keep her indoors for a while.

Of course, then she goes missing for a night.  Yes, I am the bad owner of a cat that lets the cat outdoors.  Our mostly outdoor cat is technically grandfathered in, she was an outdoor cat before all of the coyotes, foxes and giant raccoons invaded our suburban neighborhood.  Now it seems like cats go missing daily and a few are heard being devoured in the night.

I have curbed our cat care.  We keep them in the house most of the time, and usually, they stay on the patio.  Patch has been known to wander, but usually if you call her, she comes right back. 

She limped back in after her night away.  I made a vet appointment for the next day.  Later that night, I saw that she actually had two bleeding bite marks.  I called the vet first thing in the morning and moved her appointment up.

The vet said she would be fine, it looked like a fight with another cat.  They drained her wounds and gave her a cone.  We were to go back to the vet in 3 days.

I put her in our laundry room to keep her quiet and from jumping around.  Somehow, Patch wedged herself, cone and all, into a little nook under our cabinets.  Now, she has to come out somehow... The dimensions are not in her or our favor.  There is no way to reach her behind the laundry machine and in this little tube of a nook.

Her cone is basically keeping her from pushing through the opening.  My mind is thinking fire fighters right now.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.  She is due for pain meds in a couple of hours....

Tiny Handprints

I am now staring at a tiny handprint made by my daughter in December 2004--or so says the back of it.  That would make her a newly turned 3 year old at the time of the handprint.

It is green and glittery, I suppose it is a Christmas ornament with its red trimmed hanging loop.  That makes sense, a perfect holiday gift for the parents, made by the class.

As a teacher, this is brilliant.

However, years later, twelve-ish to be exact, I am sitting here, procrastinating paying the bills and staring at it.

I now know why exactly bronze baby shoes, foot prints and hand prints are so valuable--they are actual proof that your child was ever a tiny child.

I look at her now, 15 and ready to take on the world by automobile, and it is hard to believer that tiny hand print belonged to her ever.

And it is also hard to believe how that tiny hand print squeezes your heart, every day since the day her handprint was even tinier.