Morpheus gave me quite the scare this morning when he decided to disappear for a while. He's a mostly indoor cat and we don't have a cat flap, so when I couldn't find him I wondered if he had sneaked out through the front door when we weren't looking. Normally, he will appear in the bedroom in the middle of the night and I will wake up with him snuggled beside me. Today he wasn't there, and he didn't come down for breakfast either - most unlike him.
I called, and searched, and shook the box of cat biscuits. I wandered around outside looking for places he might be hiding. I went out for a while, hoping that he would reappear in the quiet and be waiting on the windowsill when I got back. Nope.
I came back to an empty house and there was still no sign of him. His food bowl was undisturbed. The litter tray untouched. He must be outside somewhere. I decided to phone Mum for moral support...she offered to come round but really, if your cat is as nervous as mine, two people calling his name is just going to make him hide even more.
Standing in the spare room, I searched through all his normal hiding spaces. No sign of him. Then out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the long dresses hanging in the corner of my wardrobe were moving slightly. Was it a breeze? Then a little sound like someone waking up from a really long nap....'mmmmmmm'. I moved the dresses out of the way and there he was, snuggled up at the bottom and totally oblivious to my panic. I would like to tell you that he jumped up straight away and came downstairs, but no, once he had woken up to see who was making all that noise, he went right back to sleep. He did emerge a few hours later, only to go straight out of the back door. He returned briefly for some food, and is now outside again. He'll be back. Eventually.