Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Tigerlily's Unfortunate Adventure

This morning, around 7 AM, I awoke to the sounds of Sammy meowing, and Ed starting his shower. It's not unusual that Sammy wakes me up before my alarm goes off at 7:30 (which happens 7 days a week so that he is fed at more or less the same time every day), so I promptly went back to sleep.

But Sammy kept meowing, wandering around, and I realized that (a) it is unusual for him to meow in the morning - he usually wakes me up by purring or touching me, and (b) hey, wait a minute, that's not his feed-me meow, that's his Tigerlily meow!

And I remembered wondering about why Tigerlily hadn't come to bed yet, when I went to bed.

And I remembered closing the open balcony door right before bedtime.

And I got up and rushed over to the balcony and opened the door.

And Tigerlily was pressed into the opposite wall-hugging corner of the balcony, looking terrified. She meowed piteously several times after I opened the door, but wouldn't come in right away, so I went to tell Ed what had happened, and she came in shortly afterward, still looking all scared and moving around in the tail-down, low-running way of scared cats.

Poor Tigerlily! She seems fine now (all rubbing on everything in the house), and I'm just really grateful that it wasn't a super cold night. (We've had snow and freezing temps lately, so this isn't a silly consideration, but I don't think it got much lower than 40 last night. She felt cool when she came in but didn't seem to be shivering or trembling.)

I am such a bad cat mommy.

7 comments:

Sally said...

It's interesting that Sammy has a distinct Tigerlily meow. I wouldn't have expected that.

Poor TL.

Tam said...

Yeah, he has a particular meow that he uses when he's trying to call her to come out and play (or he wants to hump her, as is sometimes the case). Sometimes he'll shut up if I call him from the other room - maybe he's just lonely - but I definitely recognize it as the "where is my cat friend?" meow.

And I know, poor Tiggers. I gave her her breakfast in two parts so that she wouldn't gulp it down too quickly and throw up, as she sometimes does, and I gave her a little extra. I imagine she'll sleep rather heavily today. She also had a smell...that smell that people wearing anti-perspirant have when they get sweaty (so, not BO, but the "other" BO, if you know what I mean).

Poor girl.

Sally said...

I hope she at least got a good story out of it to tell Sammy, or whatever the cat equivalent of that is.

Susan Williams said...

We have had some similar experiences. One of our cats loved escaping, but the cat we have now got out one time and now isn't very interested in going outdoors, although he does want to go into the garage if we are out there.

Sally said...

I was fond of the way Tiger evolved the practice of "sneak out one door, run around the house, stand next to other door to be let back in."

Sally said...

I just noticed how demure she looks in this photo with her front legs/paws together and her tailed wrapped around the front.

Tam said...

Susan, it's probably nice that your sweetest-cat-of-all-time kitty, about whom I have heard much, is happy staying indoors!

Sally, I think that picture of Tigerlily looks prim but also accusatory.