Deep Dark Thoughts – Page 2 – Deep Dark Thoughts

Birthday Trip – Day 3

The third day we spent on vacation was my actual birthday. To celebrate the day, we planned to spend a few hours wandering the scenic streets of downtown Carmel By The Sea. That’s the actual name of the town, and there are unlimited t-shirts and hats in every store with “Carmel By The Sea” printed on them to prove it.

My daughter, EM1, who had delayed the departure from our hotel every day since we arrived in Monterey, promised that on my birthday we would be on our way to Carmel no later than eleven o’clock in the morning.

At twelve-thirty, we were in the truck and headed for Carmel.

It was our earliest start all week, so I’m going to call that one a win.

The drive took 25 minutes. Ten minutes to get to Carmel, then fifteen minutes circling and trying to find a place to park. Once we had the truck situated in a parking lot that we were (almost) certain was free and would not result in our vehicle being towed away, we went for a little jaunt.

The first order of business, as it is every day with my family, was to find food. Whenever we travel, we always seem to start our day by roaming randomly like a pack of seagulls circling a dump, looking around for anything edible. We found a tiny cottage-looking place called The Tuck Box, that advertised breakfast, brunch, and tea. It was an adorable restaurant with barely enough room to fit five tables and a couple chairs.

We went in.

A friendly young woman greeted us, then said, “I’m sorry, but we don’t accept credit cards. It’s cash only. Do you have cash?”

Affronted that she had basically accused me of being too poor to eat in her mouse-sized restaurant, I blurted, “Of course I have cash. Who doesn’t have cash?”

She seated us and I spent the next five minutes making the kids dump out their purses looking for enough loose change to have breakfast. Now that I had made an ass of myself, I did not want to have to slink out with my tail between my legs, making some lame excuse like, “I forgot I have a doctor’s appointment in five minutes, otherwise I would totally stay and give you cash like a normal person. Because I have cash in my pockets. Lots of it. You should see how much cash is there.”

Fortunately, we were able to scrape together enough to stay. The kids had plenty of money. Probably from all those years of keeping my change whenever I gave them $20 to buy a three-dollar item.

Breakfast was actually quite nice. And expensive. But we had enough to pay for it. I even left a couple of spare nickels for a tip.

After breakfast, we did a little sight-seeing. There was a lot to see, but most of it was the same thing over and over. I don’t want to claim that Carmel is pretentious as far as towns go, but let’s just say all we found were art galleries and wine tasting rooms, occasionally broken up by pubs, coffee houses, and clothing boutiques.

See? Not pretentious at all.

After about thirty minutes, I was done with art galleries. It was time to hit the stores.

The rest of the day was a shopping day. It was my birthday, after all. Buying stuff on your birthday is a thing, right?

Only problem was, I wasn’t buying stuff for me. I spent a lot of money on my birthday, but somehow it was my wife and kids accumulating presents while I did it. For example: my wife got a lovely, four-hundred-dollar purse. My daughter, EM1, got a slightly smaller purse for only $200. The day before, I bought EM2 a $300 pair of sunglasses after EM1 discovered the glasses she wanted were already gone. Both girls got new shoes, shirts, sweaters with “Carmel By The Sea” emblazoned on them, sweaters without “Carmel By The Sea” emblazoned on them, shorts, tops, and assorted souvenirs.

And guess who got to carry the bags?

At one point, we were in a three-level, shopping complex. My wife and the girls were inside yet another clothing store. I had pretty much given up on life at that point and sat down on a bench in the courtyard, surrounded by pink, lavender, and gold-colored bags. An elderly couple strolled past while I was sitting there. They both gave me a good, long look, then began to laugh.

The man waved a hand at me and said, “Get used to it.” They both laughed again, then disappeared into an elevator which I assume took them straight down to Hell. Or at least down to the first floor of the shopping mall which was where the coffee shop was located.

We were only in Carmel for a few hours, but it was a long, tiring day. I wasn’t completely ignored, however. I got a baseball cap.

It was on sale.

Oh, and lest I forget, EM2 also bought me a churro from a street vendor while we were walking through a farmer’s market. She paid for it with her own money. After the sunglasses, shoes, clothing, and multiple meals she had received over the past three days, a one-dollar fried stick of bread seemed to her to be a fair trade. More than fair, apparently, since while I was eating it she looked at me and said, “Well?”

“Well, what?” I asked.

“Aren’t you going to say thank you?”

And like a stripper on a pole who is just happy to be receiving attention of any kind, I said, “Thank you.”

We returned to the hotel, and that was pretty much the end of the day. We all ended up going to bed early that night. Why? Well, I’m glad you asked.

We all went to bed early because EM1, the lovely child that had consistently delayed our morning departures by two or more hours every morning during our vacation, needed to be at work the next day in Sacramento by eleven o’clock in the morning. This necessitated a departure no later than 6 AM in order to get her home in time to make it to work.

Amazingly, we did succeed in leaving that morning on time. We got the truck packed and were headed to Sacramento as the sun rose over the hills to the east. Five minutes into the drive home, everybody was snoring in their seats, fast asleep, while I drove and sang quietly to myself:

“Happy Birthday to me…”

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Be sure to tell all your friends to give it a read. They can follow me on Facebook so they don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

Birthday Trip – Day 2

For the second day of my birthday trip to Monterey, my wife announced that she wanted to take a long walk along the coastline and visit a cemetery in Pacific Grove. She had family members that were buried there back in the 1950’s and she wanted to visit the gravesites. I agreed that sounded like a nice use of the day.

There was a paved bike path that we could walk that meandered about five miles along the shoreline to the cemetery. Five miles isn’t that bad when you consider that you have all day to cover that distance. What did not immediately align with my calculations when I agreed to the walk was that after walking five miles west to a cemetery, we would still need to walk another five miles east to get back home.

The five-mile jaunt was actually a ten-mile hike.

The only pair of shoes I brought on this trip were a broken-down pair of tennis shoes that were definitely not up to the task. Knowing this, the previous day while we were perusing shops and stores, I wandered into a shoe store to get some new shoes for the hike.

The first pair I tried on chaffed on the back of my heel. I figured if they were bothering me ten seconds after I put them on, it was likely that blisters, limping, and pathetic whining on my part would follow if I wore them for ten miles.

The designated shoe assistant working the floor advised that the shoes would be just fine if I wore two pairs of socks and tied the laces to the left so that the back arch of the shoe would pull slightly to the side and would not rub against my heel. He was confident that the shoes were the exact ones I needed and with just a few careful tweaks each time I put them on, I would love them as much as he did.

I looked at him like he had begun speaking a foreign language. My response to him was something along the lines of:

“Or… or… here me out now, ‘cuz I’m just spitballing here, but I’m thinking as an alternative, we could just put the crappy pair of shoes back on the rack and find something that doesn’t irritate my feet. You know, something that actually fits in the first place.”

Shoe Guy shrugged his shoulders. He seemed a little miffed that I did not immediately recognize his expertise in the fiddling with shitty shoes arena. I started to remove the shoes and he got up and walked over to help another customer in the store. Perhaps he only got a commission if he could sell that particular pair of shoes. I don’t know. Maybe I’m the dick here. Regardless, I went looking for something that didn’t require extensive modification to prevent pain and suffering.

The next day, we planned to be out and on the trail at ten o’clock in the morning. What actually happened was I sat on my bed wearing my brand new pair of walking shoes while EM1 showered and played with her hair until 1 PM.

Yup. Three hours.

We finally got out the door and grabbed breakfast (lunch?) at a crepe place whose claim to fame was a giant breakfast burrito that was flat, square shaped, and called something French to give customers that authentic Paris café experience. That is if Paris cafes had surfers in flipflops working the cash register and seagulls crapping all over the customers as they left the building. Anyway, the food was actually pretty good.

The next stop was a sunglasses store, because EM1 had found a cute little pair of Prada sunglasses there the day before that were only $400. During the night, she had convinced my wife to buy the damn things for her, so she was eager to purchase them and wear them during our walk.

This was the only stroke of luck I had on our entire trip. When we went into the store, the salesperson told us that she had just sold one pair of sunglasses an hour earlier. Guess what pair.

Yes! It was a cute little pair of Prada sunglasses that only cost four hundred dollars.

With a suitably sad look on my face that did not match my internal emotions, I offered condolences to my oldest daughter, while EM2 went behind my back and used my credit card to purchase glasses for herself for a paltry three hundred dollars.

The word “entitled” comes to mind.

We did eventually make it to the cemetery. The walk was as grueling and painful as you would imagine. It might have gone a little faster if EM2 didn’t stop every ten minutes to ask my wife and I to take her picture standing on one rock or another staring out at the ocean. She would then follow each photo session by looking at the pictures on her phone and repeating, “Nope. Nope. Nope. Delete. Delete. Delete.”

Why bother to take the pictures then?

At one point, she stood on the ledge of a cliff, holding my hand while I took her picture. She started to lean back over the water for a more dramatic pose and I immediately pulled her back toward me. When my heart stopped beating in my throat, I asked her never to do that again. My exact wording of the request had a few four letter words thrown in for emphasis.

Her faith in her father is both touching and terrifying. I could just imagine how jealous all the other fathers in the Coast Guard search party would be as we dredged the waves for her body.

How can a kid that is so smart…? Well, never mind. She’s definitely my kid.

Anyway, the point of the story is we trudged ten miles back and forth from our hotel leaving me in a physical state so battered and fatigued that I was envious of all the dead people we visited sleeping peacefully in their graves. I almost didn’t have the energy to eat my dinner that night.

Almost. I somehow managed to choke it down.

I also managed to drink a bottle of wine while I was at it because a guy has to rehydrate after such a grueling workout.

Back in the room, we planned a short trip south to Carmel for the following day.

EM1 promised that she would get up early and we could leave at a reasonable time.

Did she?

I’ll talk about that next week.

Spoiler alert: she did not.

To be continued…

Birthday Trip – Day 1

As my 55^th birthday was rapidly approaching, my wife decided that it was time for our family to take a little vacation along the California coast. Specifically, we booked a hotel room for a few days in Monterey.

We drove out to the coast late Saturday night, escaping record breaking, triple digit heat in Sacramento and finding a much more pleasant climate in which to hide for three days. The first night, we arrived and had just enough time to unpack a few things, eat some snacks while watching television in the room, then go to bed. Our plan was to get up early the next day and start our vacation with breakfast on the pier and a leisurely walk along the beach staring out at the ocean.

With no alarm set, we woke on Sunday morning at about 11 in the morning, then spent the next couple hours sitting around waiting for EM1 to get her hair just right so we could go outside. Breakfast on the pier had now become lunch.

Not a problem. I figured I could make the adjustment.

When EM1 finally looked in the mirror and pronounced herself fit for public view, we wandered down to the Monterey pier. We decided to eat first before doing any sightseeing or shopping, and we picked a restaurant that we had visited before and knew that we liked their food.

Sometime between January 2020, and June 2021 it appeared that the restaurant had fired their old chef who had taken the recipes for anything edible along with him when he left. They then hired someone with culinary talents that had never advanced past the skillset of cutting the crusts off a peanut butter sandwich. In short, the meal was a horrible disappointment.

I ordered clam chowder in a bread bowl. The soup was barely room temperature and tasted like the clams hadn’t been fresh since they were canned as surplus rations for Korean War soldiers. EM1 ordered fettuccini alfredo, which was at least better than the clam chowder, but only because it is difficult to judge the flavor of a food that has absolutely no flavor of any kind.

My wife ordered her favorite item on the menu: crab cakes. She ate about half the food on her plate and pronounced it, “okay.” This is about the equivalent of asking how the maiden voyage of the Titanic went, and having a surviving passenger say, “it was fine.”

We left the restaurant sorely disappointed and a hundred dollars poorer.

The family and I wandered along the Monterey coast for about thirty minutes after lunch and found a small group of outlet stores. Attached to the stores was a small café that served sandwiches and deep-fried snacks. I suggested we go in and order something.

My wife looked at me and asked, “You’re still hungry? We just ate.”

We all had a good laugh at her clever joke, then went inside and ate our first decent meal of the trip.

The rest of the day was a blur of shops and stores and buying items for the kids. I’m not sure exactly how much money we spent, but I do recall that the credit card company called me three times that day to make certain my card hadn’t been stolen.

In the evening, we again elected to visit a restaurant we knew and had previously liked. While the chef at this establishment was more accomplished than the busboy apparently doing all the cooking at our lunch destination, the ingredients he had to work with were rapidly dwindling. They must have had a busy day prior to our arrival.

I ordered the french dip sandwich, only to be told that they had run out of roast beef and I would need to select something else. I rallied from my disappointment and settled for the club sandwich instead.

“Can I get that on white toast, please?” I asked.

The waiter gave me a sad pout. “I’m really sorry. We’re also out of white bread.”

What? How the hell does a restaurant run out of white bread? If there is one staple that no restaurant should ever run out of, it’s white bread.

I opted for sourdough instead. Then I ordered a long island iced tea. I figured a large amount of alcohol would help me to eat the sandwich I didn’t want, served on the bread I didn’t want.

Turns out I was right. Booze makes lots of things way more tolerable.

When the meal was over, EM2 decided she wanted something for dessert. She ordered the crème brulee. Our waiter hissed through his teeth, doing his best David Rose impression, then said, “Gee, I’m really sorry. We don’t have any.”

We skipped dessert and I asked for the check.

When the waiter handed us the bill, I slapped my hands to my cheeks and told him, “Oh, no. Gee, I’m really sorry, but we don’t have any more money. We ran out.”

Not really.

But I wish I had.

We slogged back to our hotel room and rummaged through the junk food we had packed along with us for the trip. I had brought a bag of miniature powdered donuts. It wasn’t crème brulee, but we also didn’t run out.

In terms of food, day one had been something of a failure. We went to bed hoping that day two would be an improvement.

How did it go?

Well, we’ll get to that next week.

To be continued…

It Was Only One Beer

Sometimes people will lie to you. That is just a fact of life, especially when you are a police officer and you’re talking to someone who does not want to go to jail. And sometimes they will be telling the absolute truth, but it sounds so ridiculous you have a hard time believing them. You have to keep an open mind. We all deserve the benefit of the doubt until all the facts are known.

I was reminded of this once many years ago while working a patrol shift in the early evening. I was dispatched to a call of a person lying down in the middle of the road, forcing traffic to drive around him. The dispatcher advised that two other people were at the scene trying to help the person, but he was refusing to get out of the street.

I arrived a few minutes later and was pretty confident I had found the correct location when I saw a sixteen-year-old kid lying supine in the middle of the street, arms and legs spread wide and looking like a starfish stuck on a high rock during low tide.

Two other kids were grabbing his arms and trying to drag him to the curb, but he kept thrashing and pulling out of their grip until they gave up. The two kids still on their feet saw me and ran over to my patrol car.

They told me that their friend was sick and he needed an ambulance. As they told me this, I watched the kid in the street roll onto his side and vomit. From the wet mess around him (and all over him) it was clearly not the first time he had done this. My own dinner made a quick bid for freedom, but I forced myself to swallow it back down and approach the scene.

As I got closer, I could smell the odor of alcohol. There was also an empty beer can in the gutter of the roadway. The picture was suddenly much clearer as to what had happened. I turned back to the guys by my car.

“How much has he had to drink?” I asked them.

“It was only one beer,” said one kid.

“He didn’t even finish it,” said the other.

As a police officer, the people I talk to will generally underestimate exactly how much alcohol they have put into their bodies. It seems no one wants to admit to the cops that they had too much to drink. I have arrested dozens, maybe hundreds, of people for drunk in public and driving under the influence who all swore to me that they only had “one beer.”

“No, really,” I said. “How much did he drink. He looks like he almost killed himself.”

“One beer,” they both reiterated.

Okay. One beer, or a hundred and one, it didn’t really matter at the moment. What mattered was getting the sick kid help. I grabbed my radio and called for an ambulance.

The ambulance showed up a few minutes later and tossed the kid in the back to transport him to the hospital. Since he was only sixteen, and his parents had not yet been located, he was technically my responsibility until I could hand him off to a legal guardian.

Lucky me.

I followed the ambulance and walked into the emergency room with my new temporarily adopted son. They wheeled him into a room, stripped him to check for injuries that were not immediately obvious, then rammed a tube down his throat to pump any remaining contents from his stomach.

“Grab his feet,” said a nurse standing next to me.

“Why?” I asked, unsure why I was being dragged into the medical portion of the show.

“Just do it,” she said.

I complied. It was then that I realized the nurse was holding a catheter tube in her hand big enough to cause a full grown horse to shy away in fear. She was going to insert the tube to empty the kid’s bladder. And I had a front row seat.

I closed my eyes and thought, “Better him than me.”

As I stood there with my eyes closed, holding the kid’s feet, I heard him retch and cough. As the only person in the room not wearing a surgical cap, mask, and scrubs, I was treated to a light shower of God knows what on my head and face. I can still recall the experience today.

Not in a good way.

I asked the nurse if I could let go of his feet. When she said, yes, I walked out to the waiting room and called my dispatcher to find out what was taking them so damn long to find the kid’s parents. I was assured they had been notified and were on their way.

A few minutes before mom and dad arrived to relieve me of babysitting duties, the doctor walked out to the waiting room to talk to me.

“We drew some blood and checked to see how much alcohol he had in him.”

“He was pretty far gone. So how much did he drink?”

“He was 0.005.”

My eyebrows rose. For those unfamiliar with the Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) test, that number is almost non-existent.

“Then what happened to him?”

The doctor told me a small percentage of the population is highly allergic to alcohol and drinking any amount of it is toxic. For those few people, they would be better off drinking drain cleaner rather than booze. It would do less damage.

I thought back to what the kid’s buddies had told me earlier.

“So, he really only had…”

The doctor nodded.

“Yup. About one beer.”

What do you know? They hadn’t been lying to me. It almost restored my faith in humanity.

Almost.

I was still covered in puke, after all.

The Biggest Little City

My wife, my in-laws, and I recently took a trip to Reno to hang out, eat some quality food, and do a little gambling. We had a nice time overall, but there were some things that popped up that I hadn’t expected. As in all things, the reality doesn’t always live up to the advertisements.

First, my wife and I spent a little extra on our hotel room because it was the “Deluxe, spa, suite.” That sounded really cool, but what it meant was simply they had dropped a bathtub in the middle of the bedroom. Not even a jacuzzi with water jets, but just a big, square bathtub. Who the heck wants a bathtub in the middle of the bedroom? Especially when the positioning of the tub forced the decorators to put the bed in a corner with no view of the window or the television set.

Granted, I probably watch too much TV already, and didn’t need to watch more while on vacation. But still. It would have been nice to have the choice.

Second, the food was definitely sub par. I thought Reno had come a long way from the days of $3 dollar buffets with two-day-old food in the trays. Nope. The restaurants are all new and much fancier, but the food still seems to be coming from the same slop bucket in the back alley. The only real difference is the cost. My wife and I ordered one sandwich with fries to be delivered to our hotel room from a restaurant literally thirty steps from our door.

The sandwich cost $30. About a dollar per step. I suppose it’s a good thing we weren’t any further away or we might have blown our whole budget for the weekend on one shrimp po’boy. For thirty dollars, I would think the sandwich should have come with edible gold flakes sprinkled over it and a generous dollop of caviar in the middle of the fries.

Again, nope. If there was anything dolloped on our food prior to its arrival at our hotel room, I really don’t want to know what it was.

The other fun, unexpected surprise I got in Reno was the number of homeless people wandering around the streets and finding their way inside the casinos. Security in the hotels was kept rather busy by the flow-through of destitute wanderers coming in to beg food from the restaurants and use the casino restrooms to bathe in the sink.

And the situation only got worse once you went outside.

One morning, I was walking along the sidewalk, trying to make my way to another casino a few blocks down the road. I passed a woman sitting on the ground, leaning up against one of the buildings that seem to be constantly under construction in that town. She waved a hand at me and asked if I had a lighter.

I told her I was sorry, but that I didn’t smoke.

She then began to scream that I had stolen her lighter.

“What happened to the one you took from me? Where’s the f***ing lighter that I gave you.” And lots of other fun, family friendly stuff like that.

I increased my pace to get away from her. The woman continued to rant and swear. That’s when I realized that in my haste, I had left my wife and in-laws behind. She was now cussing at them.

I felt a little guilty, and almost went back to them, but eventually decided against it. It just wasn’t safe. Like the woman in the high heels that always falls during the chase scenes in every horror movie ever made, the slow ones are destined to be taken out first. It’s simple Darwinism and there is nothing I can do about that.

Somehow, the whole family survived the encounter, and we made it to the next casino. We opened the doors and, upon entry, were immediately hit with that distinctive casino smell: cigarette smoke, carpet cleaner, and the desperate tears of people gambling away their next car payment.

Speaking of cars, one of the casinos was holding a contest to give away a new car. Ten slot machines were lined up in front of a brand new, white Tesla. Anyone that could hit the mega jackpot on any of the machines would win the car. I figured I had as good a chance as any to win, so I sat down.

My daughter, EM1, is in need of a new vehicle since her old one was finally pushed beyond its physical limitations and died. Winning one from a slot machine seemed a natural next step to me.

I sat down with a pocket full of cash and an absolute certainty in my mind that I was going to win a car for my child. Four hours later, I had done it!

Lost all my money. Not won a car. Were you not paying attention? I was in a casino where decades of technology and research have been put into separating idiots like me from their life savings.

I got up and walked away while the Tesla sat on a display floor over my head, taunting me and whispering things like, “Get out your credit card. I’m sure if you spend a couple hundred more bucks, you’ll definitely win me. You’ll hit that jackpot any moment now.”

The car was lying. It just wanted more of my money.

We all left at the end of the weekend, tired, broke, and ready to be back home. We had fun, but it was loud, stressful at times, and expensive. I was looking forward to my nice quiet house and a chance to relax, wondering why I had ever left the peaceful comforts of home in the first place.

I walked in the front door and was immediately met by two adult children, both telling me how hungry they were, and asking what I was going to fix for dinner.

Oh, yeah. That’s why.

The Cat is Out of the Bag

Sometimes, despite your best intentions, things don’t go as planned. Even when you try to do everything right, there are days when the odds are just stacked against you. I can personally recall an event in my life that went wrong before I even knew that I had screwed up.

I was still working for the Hillsborough Police Department when this happened, and although it wasn’t anything terrible that occurred, it is an accident that I still think about on occasion. I was assigned to patrol and working the south end of the town when I received a radio announcement that a burglary alarm had been activated at one of our private residences. I acknowledged that I had received the dispatch call and was heading for the location in question.

Because we typically received thousands of residential alarm calls every year, and because on average less than one percent of those calls were the result of an actual burglary, I advised dispatch that I did not need a cover officer and I would advise if I needed assistance when I arrived at the house.

Although any police officers reading this will immediately point out that responding to an alarm call without a cover officer is a mistake, I just want to make it clear that this is not the mistake I am referring to in this blog. That’s coming up in a minute.

I arrived at the house and parked my patrol vehicle a few doors away so as not to advertise to any potential burglars that I was coming. I then began a systematic check of all doors and windows around the home to determine if anyone had attempted (or succeeded) in gaining entrance to the house. I could hear the interior alarm ringing as I wandered around the house.

While checking the side yard, I found a door that led into a laundry room. The door was unlocked and opened easily when I turned the doorknob. I announced on my radio that I had found an open door and requested a cover officer at this time. Better late than never, I suppose.

Because the alarm was still blaring, and burglars generally did not stick around when loud noises were announcing their presence, I assumed the house was most likely empty and decided to go inside and check for damages or theft.

As I opened the door, I saw a grey and white striped cat poke its head out through the gap. It meowed at me, clearly very upset at the loud noises in its house. It had probably been rudely awakened from a pleasant nap on some windowsill. The cat looked up at me as if to say, “make it stop,” then darted outside between my legs.

I let him go, figuring he was better off in the yard rather than inside with all that noise. I went into the laundry room and closed the door behind me. From the laundry room, I found another open door leading into the house. I began a systematic search of the residence. My partner arrived a few minutes later and assisted in the search. We found nothing out of the ordinary and decided the alarm had been an accident. Possibly even caused by the very cat I had let outside.

I walked back to the laundry room, planning to leave by the same door and attempt to lock it behind me. As I looked at the door, I noticed for the first time, a sign written with a black sharpie on a piece of paper. It said:

PLEASE DO NOT LET THE CAT OUTSIDE

Okay. Too late for that. In my defense, who the hell puts a sign on the inside of the door where anybody reading it has already let said cat out into the yard? With a sigh, I removed a business card from my pocket and wrote a note to the homeowner apologizing for letting Fluffy out of the house, along with the number to the police department in case they wanted to make a complaint.

Looking out into the yard, I noticed a grey and white cat perched on the fence separating the property from the neighbor’s yard. I immediately ran over, grabbed it, and carried it back into the house. I figured, I couldn’t go back in time and prevent the cat from getting out, but perhaps I could put things right by returning it to the house. The animal scratched, bit, and hissed the whole way back into the residence.

I admit to feeling a bit of concern when I noticed the cat in my arms did not have a collar or name tag on it. I would have sworn the cat that bolted out of the house had been wearing a red collar. I wasn’t certain. I could have been mistaken. It’s also possible that the cat had managed to take the collar off when it got outside.

Maybe.

Regardless, I removed the note I had written from the house and tore it up. I didn’t want to leave any evidence behind in case I had accidentally performed a cat swap. I figured I could always come back when the homeowners came home and discovered that someone had broken in, stolen their cat, and replaced it with a stray.

I would take the report, nod solemnly, and tell them that we would search diligently for the perpetrator that had switched cats. Then I would never speak of this incident again.

I never got a call back. I like to think that’s because I actually managed to find the correct cat. I suppose it is also possible the owners didn’t notice, or didn’t care enough to say anything.

Either way, if you ever come across someone who tells you a story about the day they left one cat in the house, then came home later to find a different cat living with them, I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention my name.