The other day, my cat went out of the house for his seasonal (?) romp around the town. This usually means deflowering virgin pussycats and increasing the amount of lookalikes he has on the streets of Pandacan. I tend to take these irregular periods of escape with a chip on each shoulder, since this usually means that my cat would come back home not only disheveled and hungry, but also needing a thorough check-up from the vet.
Luckily, we haven’t encountered any virulent form of a cat sickness as of yet, but while I try to remain calm throughout the ordeal of my cat’s absence, I can’t help but worry like a mother hen. It doesn’t help that my cat has a meow that could be heard from two streets away, so whenever the little jerk caterwauls, I’d hear him from the second floor of the house. So I know he’s out there, somewhere. I just don’t know exactly where.
The worst part is, Zardos rarely gets any outside time at all, so whenever he gets to go out, he stays out for days, weeks even. One time, my niece was able to spot him along Taft Avenue – a good two miles away from the house. And while he usually keeps close to the house, whenever somebody would come up to him to pick him up, the little bugger’d up and run off. Apparently, his romp wasn’t done yet, and if we would be so kind as to leave him alone.
This time, though, he was back in a day. I suspect this has something to do with a new set of dogs roaming the streets. The dogs are nice enough, but they’re terrors for the cats. So this time, Zardos spent more time hiding underneath cars, and less time gallivanting, the poor thing. It all came to a head earlier this evening, when I had to coax him out of under the car parked in front of the house with the foot of a chicken. Hesitant at first, it took him some time to finally sniff the chicken foot. Upon registering my scent, the cat let out a big meow! and came out from underneath the car.
I immediately scooped him up, brought him into the house, plopped him in the shower, and proceeded to give him a bath.
A consequence of these baths, however, is the cat developing a cold. So, after feeding him two pieces of chicken feet, I brought the now-dry Zardos to my room, and wrapped him in a blanket.
The moral of this story is: if you’re a cat, and you want to go out for a good time, don’t expect to come back home scot-free.