It was around noon and I was just about to head back to work after looking for my cat at home during lunch break.
She had been missing since the night before.
Then Bernhard called. He never had called before. I hardly knew him.
„M-I-K-E!“ Bernhard said. Something in his excited voice suggested good news.
„I found your cat! She is hiding in our baby carriage in the hallway.“
This was the 2nd time, Bernhard had found Shanti. (Or the 2nd time I lost her.)
The 1st time was when she had walked out of my window and over the balustrade straight to Bernhard’s apartment – to have a look at HIS cat thru the window. For a solid hour. Howling. At 1 am in the morning. I could see her from my window and ordered her to come back, but she refused and continued her howling match with Bernhard’s cat.
This time was different. Shanti had been missing in action from one of her field trips. You know, the ones, where I would carry her down the stairs, leave mine and the entry door open, and she would return by herself whenever she felt like. Normally, half an hour or so.
But she did not return, so I wrote a flyer:
On the phone, Bernhard told me he had tried to coax Shanti from the baby carriage into his apartment, but she was having none of that, hissing and wagging with her tiny white paws.
Bernhard asked me to pick her up.
…
When I got there, I checked the buggy… no Shanti. …. I walked up the stairs and then I saw her. Lying flat on a step. Not hiding at all, just lying there like a rug. Or a puddle. Like a fallen cat who had given up.
She did not say a thing at my sight, and she did not move. But her eyes perked up and I guess they said: „Oh, man. This nightmare is finally over.“
Chez Mùlda 