Cat sitting update (not written in a plea for prayer)

I was over at my friends Luke and Julie's house for a Christmas party, pleasantly petting their cat Honey. Honey likes me in 30 second intervals before he moves onto someone else. It was then that the question arose.

"So Kate, I've noticed you like cats."

(No actually, but it was clear that there was a motive and manipulation behind the statement.) "Yeah, some."

"Would you like to cat sit for us???"

"I can do that." I say this because cats are easy to sit for. I've cat sit for some and never met the cat. See Boris and Natasha, who only left evidence of still being alive.

So it began. I'm the temporary care taker of one Shadow Hockaday, a beautiful black tom cat. I've been over there five times in the last week to take care of him. We kinda had a little bond going. He would eat a little, lie out to get scratched behind his ears. Walk around my legs and smell me. I would think, wow - now why don't I like cats?

I've been in the habit of taking the used litter to the outside trash can, but things changed New Year's Eve. When I went to open the door he bolted out into the dark of the night. I threw out the cat crap, keeping my eyes on the little guy. Then I went to pull him back in. We stalked each other around the house a few times. He clawed at me. He hissed and he clawed again. I went to get bait, he wouldn't come. I went to get a towel to grab him and he was gone, a black cat disappeared into the night. I waited around, he didn't return.

I called a slightly tipsy Ms. Hockaday for advice. There were no suggestions that I hadn't already tried. So I waited a little more, and failing for the cat to return I left some food and water out, and left. I implored our friends and my faithful readers who pray and think happy thoughts out there to some higher power... to pray that Shadow Hockaday wouldn't be the newest dish on the menu at the Road Kill Cafe. I would like the little guy to be sitting on the front porch when I went back in the daylight.

I packed up a kit of things to do when hanging out at the Hockaday's and went back this morning to recapture the cat. Shadow was not sitting on the porch as Ms. Hockaday had projected. I left the front door open a crack and walked around the house looking for a black figure in the bushes. There was none. I reentered the house and settled into read, then there the little guy was pining for attention at my feet. Sweet little bipolar cat.

The next trick was getting myself out of the house without the much faster, smaller, and wittier cat slipping out. I won, but that's another story.

Now I remember why I don't like cats. They aren't easily bribed with food like everything else I seek to control.