Angel, or Angelus, as the case may be, really put me through my paces last night. I had let her off her lead in Jake and Sara's back yard in an attempt to get her to poop or pee or something. Have I mentioned that we're having a hard time getting her house trained. I may get a cage this weekend whether Deb likes it or not. Angel pooped and I dutifully scooped. We use plastic grocery bags.

Anyway, you may have realized that, to Angelus, cats are the ultimate fun, fast prey. We're in the back yard, and the calico neighborhood cat saunters up nonchalantly to the other side of the fence.

ZING! Angel has squeezed through an 8x4-inch hole in the fence like a freakin' hamster through a keyhole and is charging down the street in pursuit of the cat.

BAM! I slam out of the fence, drop the poop bag, and start sprinting. She's already two houses down, but I'm lucky that the cat takes a hard left into the back yard of some teenage hoodlums who live with their grandmother on the corner. Angel goes directly after the cat, taking a shortcut into the yard through some nasty motherfucking underbrush-cum-shrubbery. I have to go the long way about 10 yards further down. Angel has plowed through more brush and maybe has the cat treed or fenced. I try to reach her.

ZOOM! She's off again, back through the same shortcut, under Stan's split-rail fence that stretches across his front yard, and checking the other side of the tall fence for the cat. Again, I have to go the long way because I'm not sure Stan's fence could stand me trying to vault over it (even if I dared to try it). No cat on this side.

NYYYYOW!Angel zooms back to the other side. I take the long way around the split-rail again.

WHEEZE! I decide that I'm never going to get her going the long way, so I plow through the underbrush this time. I think twice about reaching through a nest of briars to get her and miss again. Back to Stan's yard. Back to hoodlums' yard. Finally I get the lead back on her. She's just ecstatic and all-over wildly happy. I am ready to strangle her with my bare hands. After I have my heart attack.

So that was the gist of our afternoon exercise.

Later that night, I gave her a rawhide bone to keep her busy while I watched Angel on TV. Soon it was missing. Just like the last bone I'd given her.

Angel likes to toss her toys around with a little head flip. They land in some weird places. I've also seen her set a toy on a book shelf and then get distracted and leave it there. I looked and looked for this bone. Under stuff, inside stuff, all over the place.

Finally I went and got the last rawhide bone that I'd bought last weekend and handed it over, admonishing her not to lose this one. She was happy. She chewed on it for about 10 seconds. Then she walked out of the living room with it. I followed discreetly.

She took it to the reading room, jumped up into a wood-frame chair with a thin futon cushion in it, and carefully placed the bone down in the cranny between the futon and the arm rest. Then she proceeded to "bury" the bone under a small lap blanket using her nose. Push, push, push with the nose until the bone is completely hidden by the blanket. It kind of looked like she was tucking it in. Just adorable.

So now I can guess that the other two bones are in equally secure locations, but I still can't find them.