Lost cat, found cat

No blog post today, really. I've just noticed this morning that our France Télécom phone answering service isn't working properly these days. Normally, when we get a call and the answering service picks it up, I get an e-mail alert. Not now, and not for the past 10 days, however. I found several messages on the service that we haven't responded to because we didn't know we got them. You might know if you are one of the people who didn't get an answer — I think all of you look at this blog fairly regularly.

We had a very nice afternoon and evening with friends yesterday. Lunch outdoors under the linden tree stretched far into the evening and we didn't get home until about 10:00 p.m. A good time was had by all, I think. Our friends also loaned us a British plug adapter that I'll be able to use to plug in my new laptop computer when it comes. Maybe today.

Ignore this paragraph: And now the bad news: Bertie has disappeared. The last time we saw him was Saturday morning, and he's now missed two breakfasts. I hope he isn't shut in somewhere, or lying injured by the side of the road. I'll call the SPA (Société pour la Protection des Animaux) today to see if anybody has taken him there. I'll also check with the mayor to see if anything has been done about the 15 or 20 cats that were abandoned in a house about a kilometer up the road toward Saint-Aignan a few weeks ago. Maybe Bertie got picked up with those cats, if they have been picked up and taken away.

About 10 minutes ago, I was sitting at my computer and suddenly I heard a cat ruckus out back. I ran to the window to see a black cat bounding up the dirt road, away from the house. But it was a black and white cat, I realized. Callie heard the cat fight too and started barking. Walt ran out the back door, and I ran out the front door to see what the story was.

And there was Bertie in the neighbors' yard. Madame J., the 88-year-old neighbor was yelling at him: Va-t'en ! Va-t'en ! — "Go away! Go away!" Walt called Bertie, and he came. He struggled a little, not wanting to be picked up, but then he calmed down. We put him in the garage and he greedily ate yesterday's breakfast and started on the bowl of kibble next to it. He was starving. I wonder if he was closed in over at the neighbors', in an outbuilding or their garage, for the last 48 hours. We may never know. But he's back, and apparently not injured.

This weekend, bad but not catastrophic news came to us from New Zealand, via California. Old friends of ours who live near Christchurch survived the earthquake, but they had some damage at their house. They said most of the chimneys in their neighborhood came crashing down, all kinds of things fell off walls in their house, windows were broken, and their cats disappeared for a couple of nights. The cats came back, and the damage is all repairable. They weren't injured. Earthquakes bring back vivid California memories for me.

That's it for today.