"Thank you" would be nice

I am NOT an animal person. My favorite kind of dog is stuffed. People who kiss their pets on the lips or let the animal lick them in the face kind of gross me out.

But a few years ago, I chaperoned a Girl Scout field trip to the Humane Society. That's where I saw "Smokey," a little gray kitten who'd been there for six weeks or so. He was cute, I had to admit.

For the next couple of days, I couldn't stop thinking about that kitten. I worried that his days were numbered. I took Mike back o the shelter to look at him and we decided to take him home. I must have been under the influence of heavy drugs or severe lack of sleep, or both.

Nonetheless, a little bit of paperwork and a check for $100 and Smokey was ours. The kids were elated and for a few days, I was totally the coolest mom on Earth.

We renamed the kitten Dungy, after the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, and bought him a blue Colts tag shaped like a dog bone. We bought cat toys and a special bed. We had officially become cat people.

And so how does Dungy repay me for saving his life? By biting my toes and meowing incessantly at me at 4:30am today. Darn cat. A simple thank you would have sufficed.

See? He's a normal boy...

If you look really closely, you'll see that Robbie was feeling creative yesterday and tried to color Dungy's rear end purple. See? All boy!

It could have been worse:

Honestly Officer...part 2

This is the second in what I hope will not be a series of false alarms in which the police are summoned...

Mike was out tonight at a basketball game. The kids were in bed -- the boys asleep and Annie reading. I was watching Grey's Anatomy on the DVR when all of the sudden I heard a wail outside the window.

I turned the volume down on the TV and listened. The wailing seemed to get a little louder and sounded like a baby on my front porch. But it also seemed to be cyclical, as if a recording were being played over and over.

I sat up, called Annie downstairs and muted the TV. She heard it too. An e-mail I received at some point in the past few years popped into my head. Hardened criminals place a tape recorder on your porch and play a recording of a baby crying. When the concerned homeowner opens the door, said criminals attack the homeowner, force their way into the house and commit innumerable heinous crimes.

I'm not making this up. Check it out here. Never mind that this link says the story is false. Just go with me here.

At this point, I'm freaking out a bit. I tried to peek out the window, but didn't want to come face to face with my ill-intentioned killer. So I did what every scared-for-her-life citizen would do, I picked up the phone and dialed 911.

I told the dispatcher about the wailing baby sound I heard outside my window. And I told her that my husband wasn't home. And that it probably wasn't anything, but I'd feel better if the police came to check it out.

Thankfully, the dispatcher was understanding, told me she'd send an officer out, and to call back immediately if I did see someone or if the sound seemed louder or closer.

Of course like a car making a funny noise stops when the mechanic gets behind the wheel, the scary wailing baby noise stopped as I hung up the phone. I looked outside to see Mike pulling in the driveway. I told him what happened and he went to check things out while I waited for the police, who arrived about a minute later.

That's when Mike and the police discovered the cat footprints -- our cat's footprints -- on the front porch, right below the window where I was sitting.

At least the officers did a really nice job of trying not to laugh until they got back into the patrol car.

A boy and a hockey stick

This morning, Robbie was playing with a mini hockey stick. First, he built block cities and used the hockey stick to wipe them out as quickly as he'd built them.

Then, he put on a most enjoyable concert from the base of the fireplace, wildly strumming the imaginary strings of his makeshift guitar.

Then the stick became a putter as he attempted to make par with a pair of rolled up sweatsocks. All of which amused me and made me delight in his 5-year-old imagination.

Until...

He slipped the hockey stick down into the leg of his pajamas, with the blade end of the stick resting against his hip. He put his hand on the blade, holding it as a sheriff might hang onto a gun in its holster.

"Robbie, what are you doing?" I asked.

"Quiet Mom," he said looking at me with perfect determination in his eyes. "I'm goin' on a catshoot."

Quick! Somebody hide the cat!