Thanks for asking

(9 am) I'm sitting here, typing, sipping (really pretty awful) flavored coffee from my "Starbucks Dongguan" travel mug, eating raspberry newtons at my desk. They really are like fruit and cake! But keep in mind that I report that from the perspective of being pretty much completely unfit to be in the office today.

"Why's that?" I hear you asking (As far as internal monologues go, yours is pretty transparent).

Thanks for asking. Yesterday afternoon Noah and his friend ****** (we do not rat out our friends!) were playing outside, and what with all the running in and out The Cat got out. After looking for her with flashlights until approximately 11 o'clock in the night, I gave up the search, but I went out to the front door, and then to the back door, at 12 midnight, and 2 in the morning, and 6 in the morning to yell, "Priya! Priya!" in the vain hope that she would come back. But she stayed out, and I slept poorly. Lauren claims to have not slept, what with the worry and the concern.

At 7:30 in the morning, Lauren drew some signs and I put them on 7 telephone poles around our house, with three different cell phone numbers on them and pictures of a sad cat to indicate that people who might know where a cat is could call our numbers, and tell us that they had found one or some cats. But call they didn't, because they weren't up yet.

I did these things, even as I knew deep in my heart/brain that The Cat had already been eaten by a loathsome badger, or swooped up by the fierce talons of a screeching bald eagle, or swept into the trash inlet of a huffing street-sweeper.

Then, at 8:44, Lauren called. The cat was home. She appeared to be not substantially worse for wear. Emergency over. All is terrific, roses, sunsmiles. And yet, I am so pissed off at the cat.

FIN

(1:44 pm) I have had a BLT and some fries at Antonio's, and I watched a scene from General Hospital on their giant LCD screen wherein some man was trying to harm a some other persons but was thwarted, and I feel alright. Not terrific, not exactly perky in the way a good employee is perky, but certainly, well-laden with fats and proteins, able to focus whatever it is I'd normally be doing* had I not been awakened four times in the still Detroit night by a cat who was not there.



*online Backgammon