Tales of the Kitteh: Rumspringa Edition

Several months after Edwin came to live with us, he began to hole up in the basement much like Greg Brady moving to the attic of the Brady house to exert his independence and get his hippy groove on. After we all left for the day, Edwin would venture to the basement and perch on my studio chair and watch for mice. After we went to bed, he went back down for the night shift with Yukon sleeping in his pen. We loved the fact that our mouse population dropped, as they can just walk into our house through Yukon’s massive dog door. But just as the mice can come in, we worried that Edwin would try to venture out, and sure enough, he did just that the other day. I noticed that he had not shown up for our morning get together in the bathroom. Before I left for work, I searched the house up and down and he was nowhere to be found. I sighed and headed in to work keeping my eyes open for him (or a kitty cookie on the road) as I drove. He is chipped, so we took comfort in the fact that if he did show up somewhere, they could scan him and get his digits and get ahold of us to claim him.


I got home Tuesday and spent the afternoon walking around trying to find him around our house and the neighborhood. Anna was aware that he was missing and got a little sniffy talking about missing him. On Wednesday, I went to the animal shelter and walked with the woman as we peered into cage after cage of meowing kitties. Note to self: DO NOT GO TO THE SHELTER ON A GRAY, RAINY DAY AGAIN. Holy shit, I don’t know how those people work there. It was very sad.

Anna and I had a talk on the porch Thursday morning while we waited for her bus. She said that she missed him and that she was really sad that she left. I had to explain to her that sometimes animals got out and they would come back. But sometimes they didn’t. I asked her if she was ready to accept that fact and she started crying and buried her face in my chest. We both got it together moments before her bus pulled up and she went on her way. I did the walk around the house and sadly got into my car for my last day at work for the semester.

After a day of critiques and petty excuses from my students, I was mentally and emotionally wiped out. I had shared with Tod my sadness with Edwin leaving as he is an awesome cat, so add that to the stress of work and it was pretty draining. However, the phone rang about four o’clock and it was Tod shouting that Edwin was back. I got a little misty as he began to share the details of finding him waiting and meowing on our porch when he and the kids got home. Anna apparently flew to the porch and ran inside to slam the basement door shut keeping away from his escape route. Yes, we will be refiguring the basement to prevent this kind of escape again.

My heart soared and I could hardly wait to get home and see him again. After three days of worrying about him and his Kitty Rumspringa I was happy to see him and listen to his very loud purr. As I sat on the couch watching Ab Fab while Tod did grades, Edwin crawled up into my lap, flipped over so I could rub his belly, and promptly fell asleep.

Yes Edwin, there’s no place like home.