I almost killed the cat...ooh look, Colin's writing!

Soss the cat is getting up there in years. He's deaf, gets lost in the house, and apparantly has lost all ability to keep himself warm despite his, you know, fur coat. Probably not really on that last one, but he sure acts like it when he pitifully scratches at the covers to be let underneath into a warm cuddly cave of blankets. I usually get roped into his scam and let him under (with a friendly warning if the hubs is a bit bubbly).

The other morning I was up and getting ready and Soss was trying to get under the covers, so I helped him out by folding the covers over him. Fast forward nine hours. I got home and tried to find him to make sure he was alive so he would know we were home. Couldn't find him anywhere. He wasn't in any of his hidey holes. So I went back upstairs to our room. I looked at the bed and thought, "surely he got out of the covers?" and started patting around, until I felt a lump. A lump that didn't move when I put my hands on it...

Now, this is one of my biggest fears and a sad future reality -one of these days we're going to come home and the cat will have made his departure to the catnip fields in the sky. But luckily it wasn't yesterday. As I braced myself and started trying to figure out how we explain death to Colin, I shook a little harder and a little "meow" drifted up through the layers of covers. Jeezy creezy! The cat had been in the bed all day?! I pulled the bedding back to discover a sleepy and seemingly contented Soss, fur all bed-headed and acting a bit surprised to be woken up and pulled from his nest. A little further examination revealed that yes, the cat had been stuck, and yes, he peed in the bed. But no poop (it's the small things, really).

The wet had soaked down and up - so I had to wash everything. Thank goodness we had invested in a good waterproof mattress pad for the "did you know humans sweat a gagillion gallons at night over the course of a mattress' life?" factor. It was hard enough trying to explain to Rob why I was washing all our blankets and down comfortor let alone why the cat was in the bed in the first place. Soss is none the worse for wear, in fact, he wanted under the covers last night when I was reading. I guess senility has it's advantages - no memory of trauma.

And to detract attention from my abysmal pet parenting skills...how proud were Rob and I when we discovered Colin writing! his name! on our chalkboard?! Daycare Donna has "school" every day where he does the typical preschool activities. But we hadn't seen him write his name yet. We've been having a lot of "I'm worried about the beav" conversations about Colin's behavior lately, so it was great to have something to really praise him on.