lost and umm… found?

So, once upon a time I was a little guy. I know, that was a long time ago. At any rate, I scared my parents a couple times by being lost to them. I don’t remember the first time because all I did was fall asleep. Evidently while moving one time, I found a nice little hole under a bed or between boxes and fell asleep. I was not found for some time and that freaked my parents out. The second time was because I was mad at them. I’m not sure what it was about, but I found a nice little spot to hide in behind the futon. I could hear everything going on. They thought I might have gone down the street to the lagoon and drowned. I did come out before they called the cops, but I scared them really bad, first.

There is a point to my delving into childhood stories. I thought that I had lost the kitten today. The door on my trailer doesn’t always latch well and while I was in the office, the door swung open. I came out and found it wide open and couldn’t find the kitten anywhere inside. I rechecked the trailer several times over the next hours. And the shop. And under the house. And under the cars. And under the woodshed. And the area I thought I saw a hawk take off from. And then one more time under the house. I saw the momma cat and some other eyes, too. I became quite hopeful. I went to a different access hole and four adorable kittens came running to the sound of my voice, but not mine. (At this point, I figured out that mine was definitely the runt. The others were a little bit bigger and more filled out.) I was happy to find other kittens, but still sad. I went back to the trailer and sat in my doorway playing with her toys. (Despite what some people thought, she is not too young to play with toys; at least, she doesn’t think so.) I was hoping that the sound of the toys would bring her out of hiding. I was on the phone with my girlfriend, barely holding it together; I hadn’t felt that awful in a very long time. Then, I thought I heard a mew, but it was so faint that I couldn’t tell if it was a cat or a bird. I stepped away from the doorway to look under the trailer, but still no kitten. I looked up and there she was in the doorway. At that point I couldn’t hold it together any longer. I can stifle tears of sadness, but tears of joy are just unstoppable. She, of coarse, had no understanding of what I was feeling. Partly because she didn’t even know that she was lost and partly because, well, she’s a kitten. I had told some people that “she must be sleeping somewhere”. Well, she disappeared again not long after and found out where she had hid. Evidently, she can scale higher than I expected and was sleeping behind some blankets on the couch. Not all that hidden, but I was looking too low.

Today, err, it was when I started writing this, I had just a taste of what my parents went through. I know its gotta be worse with a kid than a kitten; so, I hope my kids don’t do to me what I did to my parents. The kitten was bad enough.

You may have noticed that I have not written her name anywhere in this post. Well, I told some people that I was going to release the new name for the kitten this weekend. I shall do that, but I need to pull a frame out of video first. There is a story that goes along with the new name; so, you’ll have to wait till Sunday to find out, unless you’re lucky. At any rate, you’re still lucky because the story isn’t nearly as long as this one.

cheers!