Norman, our newish kitty–the stray one we adopted–is only about two years old. This means two things. First, he is crazy-full of energy. Second, he is not really old enough to remember much snow in Portland. Last year it snowed a tiny bit on Christmas, but nothing like the snowpocalypse we have been getting this year. The past couple of days, he has been getting cabin fever, yowling at every chance to go outside. Well…. today, we let him out. The snow is a nice cat-shoulder-deep powder with a thin, solid crust of ice on top. Watch as he becomes confused and annoyed by this new stuff in the front yard…
At one point, after the video was shot, I startled him and he ran through the fence into the back yard. Since the gate was buried in snow, I had to go through the house and into the back yard. I found his tracks into the big bushes he likes to hide in. Poking around a bit more, I saw his tracks within the bush. Then they stopped. There were no more tracks and no cat. I poked around a lot more to try to find him, but it was looking more and more like he went into the bush, swerved around in a half-circle, then disappeared. He hadn’t climbed the tree or wall, as there were no prints on or over the wall–he was just gone. Knowing Norman and his adventures, I went back inside and let him be. He’d be back. Sure enough, about 20 minutes later, as I was sipping coffee to stay warm, I glanced out the window and saw him in the bushes, exactly where the tracks had ended. Kim opened the door and he came racing into the house.
He hasn’t asked to go back outside all day.
