It Happened Last Night….

…and like everything else in this blog, what you are about to read is true.

10 p.m. last night.  Right after Project Runway.  V’s brother comes over with his daughter every week to watch it with V and me.  (The idea of that is quite a story in itself, but don’t let me get distracted.)  Normally I’m happy to see them but this time even though I agreed that Joe should be kicked off Project Runway, I was almost rude to V’s brother and practically kick them out like Heidi Klum does, since it’s 10 pm. and I’ve been exhausted all day and want to write my blog and go to bed early.  The good news is that I’ve figured out how to write a blog during the day like a normal person and set it up to post late at night or anytime I want.  The bad news is I haven’t done that yet because I keep procrastinating and and I haven’t finished any blogs during the day like a normal person but keep waiting until right  before I go to bed.

So I kick V’s brother out the door.  And then I do whatever it is that wastes time like I always do and now it’s around 11 when I start the blog; and of course, because I really am determined to change the course of history and go to sleep early, it just so happens that tonight it takes a long time to write my blog (the one about People magazine) even though it’s not a very important blog or a very serious blog or even a very good blog.  Which seem to be the ones that take the longest to write.  People have actually asked me about this, and now you have your answer.  I could expand on it, but I am not taking the bait.  I am sticking to writing about last night’s blog which finally I get done even though it took so long and there are so many things at my desk to be doing at the same time I’m writing my blog, which I do in between sentences.

I finish the blog and post it and now it’s already 2:30 a.m., which is WAY beyond the time I wanted to go to sleep.  I don’t go right to sleep of course, but I start answering some of the emails which are piling up.  By the way don’t take this personally if you sent one of those emails—I’m not suggesting I don’t want them, just that I’m slow getting to them.  I am talking about both political and personal emails although the political is intruding into my life and becoming personal– and I finally get around to this and it’s almost 4 a.m. when I’m ready to get up.  Every night when I do that, my cat Peppy is either sleeping within 2 feet of me or else gets up from my lap or the keyboard and follows me to bed.  And now I realize: I haven’t seen Peppy for awhile.

She’s not in my office and I haven’t seen her for hours.   And since she’s the kind of cat who doesn’t hide, but wants to be around me all the time, her absence can only mean one thing.  Actually her absence can mean she is absent, which is logical since Peppy is an indoor/outdoor cat.  But we don’t have a doggy door (or a catty door) so Peppy has to be let in and out whenever she wants which is basically all day long.  I never let her out at night.  And I think she CANNOT be outside tonight because I was the one who threw V’s brother out the door, and I’m fairly sure Peppy didn’t scamper out with them, even though she’s been known to do that.   I hate her being out at night since there are raccoons and other animals outside in the dark.  So since I did not allow her to escape, and she was definitely with us during Project Runway, and I did not open the door any other time since then, and that leaves V who went to sleep within a half hour of Project Runway ending, and even if V did go outside, which I don’t think he did, he should know better than allowing Peppy outside at night.  So I am left with only one possible answer to where Peppy is:  Peppy is dead.

This seems like a pretty extreme thing to think but years ago, I heard that when cats are ready to die, they go someplace and hide and die.  We had two cats, and the other one is now dead, and his death is actually believe it or not, a pretty funny story, but he did not go someplace to hide and die– so I still don’t know if this is true but it’s always what I think when I can’t find Peppy.  (one result of having an empty nest and no children to soak up the worry)   Plus only hours ago, just before Project Runway, V asked me if I had taken Peppy to the vet lately.  When I asked why, he said she is eating a lot more, which is unusual behavior (even though V feeds Peppy more often than I do, like a typical cat, she likes me better) and yet he thinks she is getting thinner while she’s eating more.  I hold Peppy and see her all day and I never noticed this and she looks the same to me and since I DID take her to the vet recently, I told V I wasn’t very worried when he asked about this hours ago, but NOW I am very worried when I remember this conversation and I can’t find her.

I go to the front door and call her, in case she happened to slip outside somehow.  Since this has happened before.  And normally when I call her, she comes running in like the dog she really is in her heart.  But she does NOT come running in now, so I look all over the house for places Peppy might have gone to die (Can you believe someone like me actually raised two children??)  and I can’t find her in any of her favorite places or any places at all.  By the way this requires getting a flashlight and going through our bedroom in the dark since of course V has been asleep for 5 hours already.  And now it’s maybe 4:30 but I know I won’t be able to sleep anyway until I know where Peppy is.  This by the way has also happened before.  So I go back to the computer and I’m already seeing some new emails to add to my pile of unanswered mails, since it’s already morning on the east coast.  I open a few messages and then I go back to the front door and call Peppy again more loudly—pretty loud for a quiet neighborhood at 4 in the morning.  But she doesn’t come running.  So I start thinking about how my daughter Alli is coming into town this weekend and what a downer this will put over the whole weekend and I am already mentally writing a blog about Peppy’s death.

This is not healthy.  Not the mental part, I’m used to that, but the physical part.  I really need some sleep.  So I get in bed.  Normally I read before I go to sleep, but I figure I’m so exhausted I’ll be able to fall asleep anyway.  That’s wrong, of course.  And now I’m sleepless and thinking how impossible it will be for me to fall asleep since Peppy either sleeps on top of me, or comes in during the night and climbs on top of me to sleep.  But I resist the urge to get up again or even to pick up the Blackberry next to me on the nightstand.  And I just lie there feeling very hostile since next to me is V who I know fell asleep 7 hours ago the instant his head hit the pillow which really annoys me that he can do that no matter what else is going on. 

The last time I check the clock it’s 5:34, and the next time I check it’s 8:12, and even though I was hoping I would wake up and find Peppy asleep on top of me as she always is, today she isn’t.  Before I get out of bed to start writing her obit,  I call V to ask if he’s seen Peppy today.  He of course had no idea she was missing, and it turns out he did see her when she came waltzing in the door this morning after spending the night outside, since she did escape last night somehow but I am so happy I am not blaming anyone and I don’t interrogate V and instead of her obit, I write this and soon she is back where she belongs.