One of my roommates has a cat. She's not particularly obsessed with getting outside, but she does like to sit at the back window and watch the birds and she has the feline resistance to the idea that someone else should get to decide that she's restricted to being inside, so this morning when I got up and found our front door was wide open I assumed the worst.

So I closed the door and spent the next 20 minutes searching for her. Looking in all her favorite napping places, checking under furniture, looking outside through windows for her, and in the back of my mind dreading the possibility that I'd have to call my roommate and tell him I couldn't find her. Or that something horrible had happened out on the busy street in front of our house. By the halfway point of searching fun, I even started calling her, which is of course a pointless way to try to affect a cat's location.

Then, on circuit 14 or so through the main floor, there she was sitting on the kitchen table, which I've never seen her do before. Looking at me with (pardon me if I anthropomorphize too much here, but I know what I saw) a ha-ha smirk on her face, as if to say, "Have a nice walk around the place, moron? Now feed me."

It seems absurd to think she saw the open door, contemplated a stroll around in the great outdoors, but decided it would be more fun to mess with me instead, and yet there she was. Apparently cats love their triumphant moments.