Farmer's Almanac Weather Prediction for Ontario: "Mainly fair and dry."
Currently blooming in my garden: Portulaca, Gazania Sonnegold, tomatillos, tomatoes, nicotiana, Echeveria lilacina, anise hyssop, black-eyed Susans, calendula, coleus, and passion flower.
I was going to write Part 2 of my trip to the Montreal Botanical Gardens yesterday but I couldn't muster up the energy or enthusiasm to do it. Saturday night my cat went missing. Every night in the summer she goes out onto the deck or as we've recently discovered, down into the bushes in our parking lot to catch mice. When it's time for us to go to bed we call her inside and close the place up. Sometimes she is stubborn and she pretends she can't hear us at which point we have to go down into the parking lot before she runs back up to the deck. This has been the routine for 7 years to some degree. Saturday night it was different.
 We called and called and nothing. We went out into the parking lot with a flashlight. We looked in the scrub beside the building and in a little passageway and under cars. We went around the neighbourhood. We went into other parking lots looking under cars. Nothing. She's not the type of cat to cross a street or go near people. She's not a friendly cat. She basically likes us and no one else. With us it's a matter of tolerance even. Our cat's a bit of a princess.
What made matters worse was she didn't have her collar on. I wasn't afraid anyone would take her though. She's really is a beautiful cat, but she's highly intolerant of humans. She doesn't like to be treated like a cat. I think she thinks she is a human so human to cat behaviour like picking her up, cuddling and cooing just piss her off. I was more worried that she was hurt, or stuck somewhere or lost. She doesn't like to be away from her food or the comforts of our home.
Saturday night I went to bed with a lump in my gut. Every little sound made me think it was her. I kept hallucinating the little patter of her feed or the crunching she makes when she eats and the sound of the food as it spills out of her bowl.
 Sunday was no different. Hallucinations all day followed by disappointment. A quick scour of the area in the morning came up empty handed. In the afternoon it poured rain. Really heavy rain. Torrents of water. I instantly started imagining her huddled somewhere freezing and wet with some gapping wound that was keeping her from finding her way home. I imagined her making the little cries she sometimes makes when she can't find us and she wants attention. They're really heart wrenching.
After the rain we went out to make copies of a poster Davin designed. We posted 25 of them all over the neighbourhood. I called the Humane Society to file a missing cat report. Again I went to bed that night worrying about her.
 This morning I woke abruptly from screams of "The little kitty is back". I jumped out of bed and she was laying all nonchalantly in her favourite nighttime sleeping place looking up at Davin like she was saying 'what?" She did her "hello" meow and Davin picked her up at which point we cooed and cuddled her. All the things she hates, but I think she secretly likes from us. She was all grimy and stinky which is very unusual for her. Normally she's a total priss who spends her day licking and cleaning her fluffy coat and mane. But surprisingly she's not as dirty as I thought she'd be. And not a scratch on her.
She ate a bit of food, we played with a string and now she's sleeping in one of her favourite daytime spots (right in my walking path by my desk). I can't tell you how happy I am to have my little day tripper cat back. The worst part was not knowing what could have happened and imagining the worst. Since she can't talk I'll never know what happened. I've always joked that with her moody behaviour and obsessive attention to vanity she's a lot like a teenager. Now that she's run away, she really seems like a teenager. I wish I had a little camera that I could attach to her collar. I'd love to know what she got up to out there. All that time I was worrying she was probably out there living in a cat fantasy jumping in the grass, chasing butterflies and mice.
Okay my next entry will be about the Botanical Gardens. I just want to take a moment to mention how productive my tomato plants have been. We've been inundated with tomatoes of all kinds. I can go out every single day and pick at least a handful of yellow pears or cherry golds. Another batch of Amana oranges are about to fully ripen and the early girls are still producing fruit. Davin made a batch of salsa verde from the first ripe tomatillos but it looks like there may be many more to come.
I've decided that if we are still living here with the planter boxes next spring, I'm not going to grow tomatoes. I have been so thrilled with the success of the herbs I'm just going to devote my space to them entirely.
Last year at this time: Invasion of the garden snatchers.
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