Around 11 pm this evening I was on the patio, engrossed in a phone call, when Natalie suddenly appeared. She was doing that snake dance in-n-out thing with my ankles, but still wouldn’t allow me to pick her up. I invited her in the mudroom door, opened the door to the house, and she shot upstairs to her food dish. On the advice of a neighbor, Ron C. maybe, I had put her litter box outside as a potential reminder that this was her home. As I carried it upstairs, I noticed that she had just used it, so maybe that's what brought her back to our door, not my loud telephone voice. Who knows.
Alls well that ends well, and now I have only to write a note for Benny, our mailman, who said he would keep an eye out for her.
Good night to you as well.