Woke up to a kitty licking my face. I turned on the light and saw Bentley- one of my outside kitties perched on my chest! How did he get in here? With a sick feeling, I rushed outside to find the cat sanctuary door wide open and no evidence of the cats anywhere around. In my state of mind yesterday, I must have neglected to lock it when I left after the night feeding. Chapppy, Dash, Salem, Gadget, Gidget, Poe, Turtle-all of them gone.

For Dash and Chappy who have called this sanctuary home for their entire lives, they must be so scared to be on the outside. The only thing I could think to do was to block the tunnels leading into the house and leave the outside sanctuary door open, hoping they will come back before something bad happens to them. We are talking 19 year old cats. I have let my neighbors know of the jailbreak and just hope they come home to eat and stay warm. I would love for Bentley to be an inside kitty, but he is a survivor of distemper and has neurological issues that cause him to get aggressive with the other cats or with us- that and he sprays like a firehose.

It’s been a chaotic week. They have closed my mother’s bed with the death curtain yesterday and are giving her three days max before she is gone. The director told my sister (who is there now with her) that she has never seen anyone hang onto life so hard without eating enough to keep a bird alive. She is maybe drinking 4 inches of Boost in a 24 hr period. I thought I wouldn’t cry when I got word that her life was just about over. I thought wrong and now because I wasn’t focused-  I have 8 cats outside for the first time in their lives and no way to find them until they decide to be found.