Outside adventures

All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about...
~ Joseph Epstein

Pyewacket has always tried to get out the doors when they open, but she's become even more diligent lately. She escaped out the front door one day last week when Bob was leaving for work, she got out one evening when he came home (she takes advantage of the fact that his hands are full), and he said that one morning he closed the door just as she was running toward it, and she bonked her head. Serves her right.

And now she's started a new behavior--she stands up on her hind legs with her front paws on the front door, and then sort of sinks to the ground, letting her claws scritch down the door, while she cries piteously.

She did it yesterday morning while I was sitting at my desk, and I got up and went around the corner, and she was sitting there forlornly; I said, okay, you want to go out? and I went and got her harness and leash. I thought I'd take both of them out, but when I tried to put Dinah's harness on her, she got scared and upset. I didn't want to push it, so I just put Pyewacket's on--she just laid there and let me do it, once I had the collar part over her head--and opened the door.

Now, of course, rather than rushing out as she would do normally, she laid on the carpet in the living room in front of the back door as if thinking, "What? Did you think I wanted to go out? No, no, no. I want to stay here, inside, where it's cool." Fat chance. I picked her up and carried her outside and put her on the patio, where she stood, paralyzed.

Eventually she stood up and started walking around. She sniffed everything cautiously, took a sample bite of something (spearmint, I think), had a drink out of the frog dish, then walked over to the side of the porch and sort of fell off (she looked back at me and said, "I meant to do that"), and started rooting through the plants next to the house.

It was pretty boring for me, actually. I was wishing I had brought a book. It's kind of amazing how quick she can be when she's trying to slip out the door through your legs, and how slow she can be when you actually let her out. I was also wishing I'd brought the camera with me, since she looked so pretty in her purple harness and leash, and I thought about hooking the end of the leash over a stick or something, but after about twenty minutes I just decided to take her in.

She didn't want to go, of course, but I thought that was enough.

Dinah had sat inside, watching out the window, and when I brought Pye in, Dinah had to check her out, sniff her all over, say, "Wow, you smell different, where have you been?"

Pyewacket said, "I got to go outside! I was very brave and I even jumped off the porch!! And I ate something that tasted yucky, and I pretended I was a tiger! Oh, and I drank outside water, which is completely different from inside water, and none of the bad cats came by, but if they had, I would have stomped them!"

And Dinah looked at her and said, "Can I sniff your butt?"