Yesterday, Jeff's mom and I are both in and out of the house a couple of times, and the second time I got home, I realized that I hadn't seen Copper or Ellie in quite some time, that neither of them had come out to say hi when I'd gotten home, etc. So I started looking, and looked through the house three times, and Jeff's mom looked, and we couldn't find them, and there was a loose screen in her room and a door that doesn't close very quickly, and it's been a long week, and I wigged out. Jeff came home early - it was almost time, anyhow, and he volunteered - and we found them, tucked waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay up in the corner of a closet that his mom and I had both looked in. And a room that we'd spent extensive time in, calling their names, and they hadn't answered. Brats.
This morning, Copper starts going nuts and yowling her special "the world is ending" yowl at the closet in the entry way upstairs. I thought maybe one of the other kitties had gotten into the closet, so I opened it up, and Copper immediately lunged for the kitty-sized hole in the closet floor around the duct work (which we need to fix ASAP). I grabbed her, took her downstairs to where the other two were, showed her that the other two were in fact safely parked in Jeff's mom's room, and told her to chill.
Now they're all showing unseemly interest in the air return. Oy.
(And now, Marty's latest trick? Figuring out how to open that closet [the doors are those metal ones that fold out in the middle, and not very secure on their tracks.] The cat food has been relocated [that was dumb, I know] and heavy things put in front of the doors.)