We popped the trunk and each of us reached in to get our suitcases. They were the small ones; we had only been gone for a few days. I was tired. It had been a long drive and I had slept through a lot of it, so I felt groggy, headachy, and a bit out of sorts.
I opened the door that separates the house from the garage and walked inside, pulling my suitcase behind me. I half expected Freddie to meet us at the door, but he wasn’t there. “Freddie!” I called, walking into the family room.
Still nothing.
“Freddie!” I called again, slightly worried now.
Silence.
I checked a few of his daytime sleeping places, but didn't see him.
“Freddie?” I said, and turned to the stairs.
He was slowly walking down them, blinking sleepily. “You’re home,” he said.
You know how this works, but as always, a gentle reminder:
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I plucked him off the stairs and held him against my chest, rubbing his head with my free hand. “I missed you!” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “I would hope so.”
He was acting a little like aloof but the fact that he was letting me hold him without wiggling or turning into water told me he missed me too.
I kissed his head and set him down. I walked to the couch and dropped into it. Freddie trotted along behind me, pausing to sniff my suitcase. Eventually, he made his way to the couch and curled up next to me.
I rubbed his head. “So you missed us?”
He sniffed. “You were gone a long time,”
I laughed a little. “Not that long.” I said. “Only a couple of days.”
“It was a long time,” he said, stubbornly.
I shook my head. “I talked to my cousin,” I told him.
“Who?” he asked.
“My cousin. Who stayed with you?”
“Oh, him. I don’t know him,” he said, looking at his paws.
I laughed. “Yes, you do. He’s been over here. You sat on his lap!”
“No,” he said.
“He said you hid from him,” I told him.
“I did,” Freddie confirmed. “Because I didn’t know him.”
“So you hid the whole time?” I asked, exasperated.
“I was very sneaky,” he said.
“But you didn’t have to hide!” I said. “He’s nice and he likes you! You like him!”
“No.”
“Freddie — “
“I don’t like him I don’t know him and you can’t make me!”
“So you’re just going to hide if he comes over to housesit?”
“Yes.”
I rolled my eyes. “So what do we do?” I asked.
He frowned up at me. “Don’t leave again,” he said, simply.
I shook my head. “We are going to leave sometimes.”
He lifted his tail and smacked it against the couch cushions.
“It’s inevitable,” I said.
His tail continued to beat against the couch.
“I don’t want to have to board you,” I said.
He froze. “What’s that?”
I scratched my head, hesitating. “It’s, uh, where we take you somewhere where there’s a lot of other cats who’s people are out of town. There are people there who would take care of you.”
He stood up. “You’d send me away?!”
“No!” I said, “of course not! It would be temporary!”
“I would hide so hard if you tried to do that,” he muttered.
I petted him until he relaxed a little. “Well,” I said, “that would be worst case scenario.”
He sat again. “OK. Let’s not do that, though.”
“Yeah, ok. I just don’t like the idea of you being so scared you feel the need to hide for several days.”
“It wasn’t like that!” he said.
“No? My cousin said that the only way he knew you were here was that the food he put out got eaten!”
“Yeah!” he said, proudly. “I was very sneaky! And I watched him for you.”
“You...watched him for us?”
“Uh-huh! I made sure he didn’t do anything you wouldn’t like!”
“He wouldn’t, though,” I explained, slowly. “We trust him; that’s why we left him with you.”
“Well, I made sure,” he said, darkly.
We sat in silence while I petted him for a minute. Finally, I said, “what would you have done if you saw him do something you didn’t like?”
His eyes narrowed. “I would have taken care of it,” he said.
I thought about that for a second and then laughed. I couldn’t help it. “He’s almost seven feet tall,” I said. “You are afraid of ducks.”
He gave me a dignified sniff and muttered something under his breath.
“What?”
“He wasn’t a duck!” he said loudly.
I laughed again.
Freddie frowned hard at me.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. But here’s the thing: he was here to keep the ducks away from you!”
“He — what?”
“He would have protected you. That’s why he was here. And to keep you from being lonely and missing us too much.”
He thought about it for a moment. “Oh,” he said.
“Yeah, oh. We talked about this before we left. Why did you hide?”
He muttered something to his paws.
“Huh?”
“I didn’t remember that,” he said.
I rubbed his head. “Poor Freddie,” I said.
He purred gently. “Poor Freddie,” he agreed.
Happy Caturday, Peeps! We had a great time, but are happy to be home. Freddie seems to be happy about it too and is no worse for wear despite having hid from my cousin for two days. He ate all his food, though, so I don’t think he was too traumatized.