Runaway

As I have mentioned before, we are a 4-H family.  My girls are the 4th generation on one side of the family and at least the third generation on a couple of other sides.  While it is not necessary, many 4-Her’s show livestock.  I say it is not necessary because I never did, my mom never did and my grandma Holst didn’t show livestock (when she joined 4-H,(hosted the first meeting in Scott County along with her sister)) that was for boys and the girls did Sewing, Food and Nutrition, and Home Improvement.  All of us survived never showing livestock.  However, my husbands family have been showing cattle and I am not sure what else since forever and recently his nephews show sheep.  Naturally, our girls wanted to show and animal so we choose cats.  We already had a cat, so it was natural that Sarah would start showing the cat when she was in 4-H.  We now have two cats because the girls each had to have their own cat to show and we had a 3-year overlap.  

We now have Sox and Tabitha.  Sox will be 11 years old in about 2 weeks and Tabitha will be 7 years old in a couple of months.  The two cats so resemble the girls in attitude, behaviour and many other areas it isn’t funny.  Sox is the black and white kitty.

Yesterday when I called home to let Kristen know that I was on my way home, she informed me that she hadn’t seen Tabitha since she got home.  This is highly unusual as Tabitha usually meets you on the steps and can’t wait to get some attention. Sure enough, she was nowhere to be found.  I sent Kristen outside with the slim cat food ball. Quite often Tabitha will come when she hears food.  Needless to say, that cat has food on her mind for most of her waking hours.  She didn’t respond.  We tried searching a few more times, but no Tabitha.  Finally about 8:00 that night, Kristen went outside and started calling for her and shaking the food ball.  Yes, Tabitha finally waddled over to our back door.  She had been underneath the neighbor’s deck.  We have found her there a couple of times.  The really surprising thing is that she hadn’t been back and begging for food earlier.  She usually starts begging for food from the moment we walk in the door after school and doesn’t stop until we feed her.

It was rather quiet around our house yesterday afternoon and evening until Tabitha decided to come back home.  Even Sox, who pretends to hate Tabitha, was kind of mopey and sad (if a cat can be mopey). Kind of hoping that she is done wandering for quite some time.  Not sure how she managed to get out.