Tough Day

Today was one of those days a person can really do without. I woke up in a shitty mood and so di Leigh and Juneau the cat. We bickered a little bit this morning and mostly ignored each other while we got to work around the apartment. After a few quick errands this morning we mostly stayed home to pack and sort through clothes and to allow people to come into the apartment to consider buying our furniture and stuff. All day we only sold little things like bookcases and small tables, but it's a start. We still need to unload this living room set and some other big items or else we'll be in a real pickle when it comes time for Leigh to head south to put our stuff into storage.

Last night we were brainstorming about how to get people interested in our stuff, including smaller items like cookbooks and kitchen gadgets. I had the idea to put snazzy signs in the mailroom and the elevator. The plan worked pretty well....well, sort of. 4 or 5 people have stopped us in the hallway to ask to see our stuff, but all we sold was one cookbook for $2. I think the signs are just letting people know that we have stuff and they think it's totally OK to come into our apartment with no intention of buying anything. Harmless, but kind of annoying.

This afternoon one such person asked to see our "sales floor" and we obliged. She came, she saw, she left. About two hours later Leigh asked me if I had seen Juneau the cat. Neither of us had seen her for two hours! It's a small apartment, so we looked and looked and didn't find her. We were starting to get nervous so I looked up and down the halls on our floor, but no Juneau. Leigh kept looking in the apartment and no Juneau. At this very inopportune moment a buyer called us to come pick up some stuff, so Leigh dealt with that while I started knocking on doors all over our floor. Only one person answered and nobody had seen her.

I was frantic. Leigh came back to the apartment and we started tearing open boxes, digging into closets and making a huge mess. I thought Juneau had snuck out when our last "customer" had left and then maybe someone snatched her. Leigh was afraid she had been trapped or crushed while we were moving and packing.

At this point Leigh was hardly breathing while she searched and I was crying. Then I heard Leigh say, "Jesus Christ!" from the other room. I ran in to find Leigh crouched down looking into our old printer cabinet.

"I found her," she said cautiously.

All I could do was squeak out, "is she OK?"

"She's fine," Leigh said, to which I replied by absolutely sobbing with relief.

If there was ever any question as to how much we love our cat, the answer might be a bit too much. I cannot imagine what frantic messes we'll be like when we have children.

We figured out that Juneau had been hiding out for a few hours because she was pretty upset with the changes we had been making to the apartment. Last week we sold off "her" bed and her favorite sleeping places have slowly been disappearing from closets, etc while we pack and sell things we own. Once strangers started coming into her home it just got to be too much for Juneau the cat, so she found a good hiding spot and refused to come out no matter how much we called for her. I told Leigh that if she had an IQ above 15 she'd be in big trouble, but for now I'm just so relieved to know she's safe at home with us.