Nothing but Trouble

Pat was coming over to pick me up to go to Panera Bread for a Clear Lake
Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group Meeting. As I step outside I
hear faint squalling. I pick up the mail but can't quite track it down.

I can't tell if it is a bird or a cat. I look around and still can't
find exactly where it is coming from. Pat arrives and she determines it
is coming from under the hood of a large pickup truck.

I rock the truck and knock on it a few times and she's right. It is a
cat with very good lungs now that it knows something is happening. The
problem is no one knows who the pickup belongs to.

I get an envelope and write on it in large letters "There is a cat under
your hood" and stick it where it can be seen when whoever gets back to
his car. I know Pat, if there is a cat involved I am going to be here
for an hour.

No good. "We have to find the owner."

By this time the noisy cat and us asking people has attracted about a
half dozen people. We check around the manager's office and various
places trying to track him down. Everyone has seen him but no one knows
where he lives. Finally a maintenance man knows and he comes and opens
the hood.

There is an orange kitten on top of the radiator. I carefully stay away
as someone lifts it out. It is friendly and active and still very
noisy. Since I didn't pick it up, and neither did Pat, we are safe. I
think. The person who picks it up says he will take it to a pet store
tomorrow, if they are open Sunday.

We drive off and get to the meeting 30 minutes late but three other
people are just arriving. By the end there are 15. It breaks up just
before nine with a few of us going to Brent's house where we discuss TV
shows and movies and watch a short but still too long Star Wars parody.
Would have been just as funny at half the length.

We get home around midnight but I can't sleep and stay up till 6:30.

11 AM: "Meow, meeow yeeoww yeeeoooow!"

This wakes me up. The kitten is scratching at my window. Why my window?
There must be over a dozen on this side of the complex.

I get dressed, I know this is going to be nothing but trouble.

At first I can't find it outside but finally see her down a few units
following someone upstairs. The lady picks it up and puts it at the
foot of the stairs again and goes back up but that kitten is a quick
little bugger.

The lady tells me it was her husband who took the cat home but the pet
store is closed and it is stalking her birds - the little beast.

Her neighbor left a large bowl, bigger than the kitten, of bread and
milk at the foot of the stairs but she doesn't want it.

Fate. Kismet. It was at my window, wasn't it? I pick the cat up and
take it home.

I am out of tuna fish so I fry up an egg. It takes a thumb nails worth.
All it wants to do is get into things, meow, climb all over me, and meow
a lot more. It finally settles down on my lap while I am at the
computer typing this.

This is going to be nothing but trouble.