Snickers

It's been an eventful week.

On Monday my parents left nice and warm Texas for snowy and cold Oregon. I do not envy their drive. Hopefully they will be back home, safe and sound, today.

Sometime on Monday, we're not sure if it was when my parents were loading up their car and had the front door open, or when we had the back door open because we were self-cleaning the oven, one of our cats got out. We weren't too concerned, she's snuck out before and usually hangs out in the neighbors yard until she wants to come inside. Then she scares the living daylights out of us by jumping onto our bedroom screens in the middle of the night.

Tuesday came and went, no Snickers. By Tuesday evening we were starting to get concerned, so my oldest and I walked up and down our street asking the neighbors if they had seen her. I had visions of the neighbor dog mauling her, an owl getting her, or her being hit by a car (we did drive around the neighborhood and there were not kitty carcasses so that eased my mind a bit).

On Wednesday we went online and filled out a form that would be sent to all of the animal shelters in the area, with a picture of Snickers and her microchip #. By this time my husband and I had resigned ourselves to the fact that Snickers had either died or someone had found her and took her in. The kids were pretty sad, we got her as a 6 week old kitten, she was found after she and her litter mates were dumped on the side of the road, and she's been part of this family for almost 4 years. Even our other cat, Sampson, seemed mopey and sad.

Wednesday night at 10 pm, just as my Netflix show was ending, I heard a faint "meow". Almost immediately our German Shorthaired Pointer, Otto, ran too the door wagging his tail. Sampson got up off the couch and ran to the door too. As I was getting up I heard a series of "MEOW, MEOW, MEOW" right at the door, how dare I leave that poor cat outside while she obviously wanted in. When I opened the door Snickers walked right past me to the food bowl. Typical cat behavior, here we were worried and she didn't even care, all she wanted was food.Still, we went to bed happy knowing that she was safe and nothing bad had happened.

This morning, as we were getting up, we heard excited little feet coming down the stairs. Elise, our youngest, came into our room carrying Snickers in her arms and the look on Elise's face was priceless. Totally melted my heart. She was so happy to get her "Snicky Licky" back and couldn't stop smiling and giggling. The boys were excited too. Snickers does the "bed shuffle" at night. She sleeps with every child for a portion of the night and the boys really missed that.

As of right now Snickers is still sleeping in one of the kids rooms so whatever she was doing outside really tired her out. Hopefully she won't get outside again.