It Had To Happen

So, Romeo went missing. The astute among you may have noticed my use of the past tense there, which implies that he's missing no longer. Indeed.

He was, however, most definitely missing. For many very long hours. We searched everywhere in the house. We searched everywhere in the garden. We banged his food bowl far too much and too loudly for civilised suburbia. We called, coaxed, cajoled and shouted his name and all combinations of his various nicknames. We searched the roads for corpses (or at least, we grown ups did - we left Emily out of that bit...). We walked around the various shortcuts from here to a housing estate looking for him. We got the neighbours to look in their garages and sheds. We asked Juliet where he was, constantly. We watched the darkening sky with increasing anxiety and speculated about how he'd keep warm outside over night, whether he could find his way home in the dark, whether he'd climbed a tree and couldn't get down, whether he was on someone's roof, and whether his quick release collar would really work if he'd got himself caught on something. We racked our brains to remember if there had been any vans or trucks around he could have gone in. We got neck ache from looking up in the trees. We comforted Emily and prepared for a horrible evening and night of waiting.

After which Romeo strolled in from the direction of the hall with a chirpy miaow and sat down for a wash.

Bloody cats. He hadn't been outside as he was warm and dry. He was very hungry - hadn't eaten since breakfast time - but then why, for the sake of all that's feline, didn't he surface when treat packets, biscuits and bowls were being rattled not to mention when his name was being yelled with increasing levels of panic and desperation????? And where the hell was he, as we'd looked *everywhere*???

Bloody cats.