We had a bit of a crisis here over the weekend; Desi, one of our two cats, had disappeared.

It all started (we suspect) on Friday night. My cousin was staying the night before catching a train to New York, sleeping on the living room couch. About 11 pm, I smelled something. My wife did too.
“It smells like a skunk,” she said, as she went for her asthma inhaler.

I recognized the smell immediately; my cousin was smoking something. I went down to check on him.

Now, I'm not the type to get all law-and-order about the recreational use of tobacco alternatives. But Paula's lungs were constricting, and…well, the smell was something awful.

“You smelled it?” he asked, nonplussed. “I was blowing the smoke out the back door so I wouldn't bother you.”

“Well, we didn't put up our plastic and duct tape,” I said. I told him it was aggravating Paula's asthma, and he agreed not to smoke any more. “Nada mas,” he said.

Well, the next morning, I drove my cousin to the train station. Paula and I then took Zoë to the National Zoo for the day. We got back that evening, and were greeted by one cat.

We have two cats.

After a thorough search of the house, we concluded that Desi was not in the house. And that led us to the conclusion that he had gone out the back door while my cousin was…otherwise engaged.

Angst ensued.

I went out and searched the neighborhood for about two hours, shining a flashlight under cars and bushes and calling for Desi. Despair began to set in.

I thought about how I was going to explain this to my boys when they got home on Sunday. I thought about everything else that you think about when a pet gets lost. All the other grief of the week swept back in.

I cried.

I went back into the house, and started printing out “lost cat” posters to put out. Then, just after 10:00 pm, in my stocking feet, I went out the back door and tried calling for Desi again.

“Mweeow?” came a distant-sounding reply.

I called again, and stood quietly in my driveway, trying to pinpoint where the mewing was coming from. Under my neighbor's car, Desi huddled in the cold. I got down on the ground next to the car and called to him again; he nervously crept over to me.

I carried Desi into the house and called to Paula. She poured cat food for Desi, which he devoured. We wept in relief.

I made us Manhattans.