Temptation

I had a heart-stopping experience yesterday.  While having a sit down after barn chores, I glanced over to see a cat walking along the deck.  "My goodness, that looks just like Celeste."  I quickly got up and went outside to check.  Since I rarely do anything quickly, that set Bess off and shutting her inside made her anxiety level even higher.  So the dog is barking and I'm going back and forth on the deck, out to the front yard, around the house, calling Celeste's name just in case.  The cat had vanished, no sign anywhere.  I absolutely knew I had seen a grey cat heading toward the hummingbird feeders and that it hadn't passed me when I went outside.  If it had been Celeste, where did she go and how did she get out and did she go alone? 

Evidently when I'd gone out to fill the hummers' feeders before going to the barn, the kitchen door hadn't latched completely when I came back in and the wind had blown it slightly open.  After having written just a couple of days ago that the cats were strictly house cats and why, I was truly heartsick.  The temptation of the open door was just too great.  I went to the bedroom to look, afraid I'd find nothing, and there was Ralph, looking guilty, wide-eyed and hiding under one of the bedside tables.  "Oh, Ralph, I'm so happy to see you!  Where is your sister?"  I can't describe my relief when Celeste came out from under the bed.  Both cats were safe, having come in the way they'd gone out.

Like little kids who knew they'd been naughty, they stayed in the bedroom all day in self-imposed exile.  No running up and down the hall, no crooning to the piglets, no coming to sit on my lap.  I think they'd been scared silly after their outing.  I know I was.

My little runaways stuck as tight as limpets in bed last night.