Medora's Great Adventure

Meet Medora. She's a 4-footed stinker, but cute as a bug.



As I've said previously, Lovely Daughter and Lars are in Albuquerque this week, so we're dog sitting and supervising their cats. This involves going over to her house every day, sifting through the litter boxes, making sure they've got food and water, and playing with them a bit. At the moment they have three cats in the house. But knowing their household, that could change to a larger number at any time.

Homer is a handsome old dude who doesn't know he's a cat. She got him at a rummage sale when she lived in Virginia. He's got a unique personality, and I swear if he was a human he would be gay. Then there's Hermione, a beautiful, long-haired white kitty who arrived at their house supposedly on a temporary basis until the original owner could find a home. You guessed right - Hermione is still there. The only real problem with this is that Lovely Daughter was told that Hermione had been spayed. Guess what - that wasn't accurate, and about a month ago Hermione went into heat, howling and rolling on the floor all night long, calling all the neighborhood Toms to come to her rescue. Hermione has a doctor's appointment the day after they get home. No more solos at midnight from her.

Well, this set off Hercules, who is an adult neutered male, who definitely didn't want all the neighborhood Toms invading his property, so he set off marking his territory. All over the inside of Lovely Daughter's house - which caused Hercules to become an outside cat very quickly.

Now Medora is a real social butterfly, and when I was over *visiting* the kitties yesterday she was so lonesome - so much more so than the other two - that I decided to bring her home with me. She's visited over here numerous times so I knew it wouldn't be strange to her. As usual she hopped out of her carrier and proceeded to investigate everything. Senior Citizen Simon follows her around everywhere she goes as though he's trying to keep watch so she doesn't get into any trouble.

Ole and I crawled into bed last night as usual - one dog on the floor by the foot of the bed, the other on the floor on his side of the bed. You have to be very careful if you get up at night because of the dogsticle course. There are bodies laying all over the bedroom floor. I expected Simon to climb into his usual place beside my legs, but he didn't. He was still supervising Medora. So off to sleep we all went. It didn't take long for both Ole and Beau to start snoring - and what a competition that is. Beau lays on his back with all four feet in the air, head tilted way back and saws logs. Ole lays on his back but he's missing the feet in the air (snicker).

Anyway, just as it was becoming light out this morning I was rudely awakened by some very loud howling and catterwalling. I sat straight up in bed thinking Simon and Medora had gotten in a fight, went racing out to the living room and kitchen, but no cats. I could still hear the howling and determined it was coming from outside, but who in the world could it be? I had made sure that all the little flippy dog and cat doors were locked so Medora couldn't get out.

The one thing I had forgotten to close was the bedroom window. I had left it open a crack (and didn't have a screen on it), just enough to get some fresh air into the bedroom. You have no idea how much body heat two big dogs can give off. Well, Medora, with her nosy nature, had apparently hopped up into the window and managed to slither through the opening and escaped to freedom!! I have no idea how long she had been outside exploring, but it had started to rain during the night, and she looked like a drowned rat when I found her. At least she was smart enough to come back to the same location from which she had escaped. She's very fortunate because she is definitely not street smart and we have a lot of wild critters around here that would have loved to have a little kitty for a midnight snack.

So I ran quickly out to the garage, opened the door and she came barrelling in, looking like someone had dunked her in a pail of water. She's long-haired, so all her hair was plastered to her body. I wrapped her in a towel and tried to dry her off, but she was so wiggley and squirmy it was hard to do. All she wanted to do was lick my face in what I presume was gratitude. Although she was pretty hungry (snicker) and when I put her down she immediately inhaled all of Simon's food.

And that concluded Medora's Great Adventure.