Posting days: Sunday and Wednesday and, sometimes, maybe, extra bits in between.

September 30th 2018

Last week was a bad weather week for Isis. Here’s a summary:

Monday’s bright but the ground is still wet, so she can’t walk out or  play in the garden. I take her into the lane.

Tuesday’s also bright but not as soggy as Monday. Isis plays in garden but finds a squishy ball so by the time she is brought in, her hairy front feet, her legs and her jaws are caked in mud.

I begin with her right leg. She utters a threatening growl. I express my displeasure with a loud, deep growl of my own. After this, she restrains herself but keeps twitching out the foot which I have placed in the bowl. I resort to holding up the other foot. After a few minutes of this, she sensibly places the other foot in the bowl too. Good move, Hairy One.

A great improvement. As you may remember, she used to kick the bowl of water up in the air and bite my hand and her own foot.

Wednesday is very bright, sunny and warm. So warm, in fact, that I leave the back door open from 11.00 a.m. until early evening while Isis plays in garden. She pops in at 5.45. She hopes that her tea is ready. It isn’t. She lies on the day bed for about ten minutes, then returns to the garden.

She comes back in at 6.45 and eats. I pop upstairs to check whether Daisy needs more food.

I survey the bed, as usual, looking for a tell-tale Daisy shaped mound. I always poke the mound very gently with my finger and she responds with a delightful little ‘Purrrrp !’

But today there is no purrrrp.

There’s no mound. I tear off the duvet.

There’s no Daisy.

Oh my dog!

I search under the bed, in the wardrobe, the bathroom and my art room. No sign of a cat.

Oh my dog! Daisy must have nipped out of the back door. I rush into the back garden and call,

‘Daisy!’ ‘Daisy!’ ‘DAISY!’ D—-AI—-ZEEEEEEEEE!’

I call her name over and over again.

Not a sound. Not even a rustle.

I pelt up the hall, fling open the door of the porch and shoot through the gate. Thank goodness, no flattened cat in the road or on the pavement. No sign of her in any of the front gardens either. And no response to my increasingly desperate shrieks.

I rush upstairs again and search even more thoroughly. I return downstairs and examine every possible – and impossible – place where a small cat could be hidden. Then I bellow and screech outside again.

When I return from the front for the second time, I am very worried. What the hell has happened to little Daisy? What on earth will I say to Polymath when I visit her tomorrow? What if she phones me tonight?

I can feel the tension rising from my gut to my throat. I drag myself back to upstairs, and glance miserably at the bed.

I can’t believe it.

There’s a long, thick, black tail protruding from the top edge of the duvet. I’ve caught her in the act of tunnelling back under it.

Has she been outside?

I carefully scoop her out. Yes, her usually very warm little paws are stone cold, and at the base of her tail is a cluster of grass seeds.

“And where”, I ask her, plucking the seeds from her fur, “did these come from?”

She blinks.

Isis came from the Aeza cat and dog rescue and adoption centre in Aljezur, Portugal. For information about adopting an animal from the centre, contact kerry@aeza.org or  www.dogwatchuk.co.uk