Paribanour's Might've-Been Excellent Adventure

The cats were "out" last evening when my brother came home. He informed me later that he'd let Jasmine and Mittens in but Paribanour was too comfortable where she was and didn't want to move. As I was getting ready to quit for the night, I opened the door to let her in.

No Paribanour.

I searched around in the house in case she had changed her mind at the last moment (they do that frequently) and slipped in behind my brother as he was closing the door. (Mittens is a master at sneaking into my bedroom or bathroom without me noticing and then dashing behind/under the bookcase, the easy chair or the commode where I can not reach her. The solution is always to leave the room and close the door behind me. Within a couple of minutes, she invariably wants to get out again and will sit by the door until I reopen it.) My search turned up only two cats.

The problem is the outer door latch no longer works. I purchased a new "universal" latch but our old latch apparently was not "universal" and so the screw holes for the new one do not match up. My brother claims to have a drill buried somewhere in the garage and has promised, in his redneck way, to find it for me but that's somewhere way down on his list of things to maybe get around to someday. And until last night it made no difference anyway since the cats were all perfectly content to just lie around in the foyer and watch the world go by.

Last night Paribanour figured out how to open the door.

I'm pretty sure it was an accident. I think she surprised herself. Nevertheless,  . . . curiosity and all that . . . out she went.

Being a house kitten, she has no concept of the big world out there and certainly no clue how to deal with the opossums, raccoons, dogs and cars we know are in the neighborhood let alone anything more exotic (coyote) that might come wandering by.

I don't know how long she was out. Fortunately, she either didn't go far or was just returning when I went out to find her because she was in the grass right at the edge of the walkway lights. Otherwise I would have been searching for an all-over dark gray cat in the night shadows. She made me chase her a little but wouldn't leave the walkway so that game didn't last long.

So all's well that ends well. And my brother promises to find the drill. Soon. He says.