Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never by Lancaster, Jen (e books free to read .txt) 📕

all worked together to bash out the screen, which is why it flew into the roses and then they went on their killing spree.” Fletch points out where the hedges are trampled on the side of the house and the flattened daylilies. “My Boy Scout training tells me that’s where they left the protection of the side of the house.”

“And then where did they go?”

Fletch looks puzzled. “I don’t know. I wasn’t a very good Boy Scout.”

“Do you want me to keep crying?” I demand.

After more searching and another bout of hysterics on my part, Fletch convinces me to go inside with him. “All we can do right now is wait. They’ll come back. They’ve got it too good here not to come back.”

“What if they don’t? What if they’re hurt or they decide they like the taste of freedom too much? I cannot lose five goddamned cats to death and attrition in one year. Do you understand me? I can’t do it. This will be the straw that breaks and has thus far prevented me from being The Crazy Cat Lady. This is what’s going to earn me a spot on Animal Hoarders.”

Fletch grasps me by my shoulders. “Jen, it’s going to be okay. I promise you we will get them back. Whatever it takes, we’ll get them back.”

Fletch tries to distract me with a late dinner and free rein of the remote control but I can’t eat and I’m not interested in TV. I mean, I know that they’re just cats and in the scheme of things, kittens are pretty much free… at least until you take them to the vet. Plus, they’d probably prefer to live in the wild anyway.

Despite the fact that I equate the cats with being my children, it’s so not the same. As untethered as I feel right now, I have to wonder what happens to families who have to deal with a real missing child, and not just a furry surrogate. I feel awfully self-indulgent right now, wallowing in my own unhappiness. I can’t even imagine what parents must go through; it’s unthinkable. Part of why we never opted for children is that I couldn’t handle it if anything ever went wrong. I’m already so neurotic and controlling that if I had to worry about a tiny person’s life, I fear I’d go over the edge. My constant anxiety and worst-case-scenario-ing would consume me.

Angie, mother to four healthy, happy sons, says you eventually learn to balance the need to protect your kids with their need to explore boundaries, but I wouldn’t be capable. I’d want them in a full set of pads and a helmet and I wouldn’t ever want them out of my sight. I would be the poster child for helicopter parents everywhere. [Yes, there would be leashes. Laugh at me all you want in the mall, but I’m not letting these guys wander away.]

My children would likely resent me for my overprotection and we’d all be miserable. Plus, since I can’t even keep a damn cat safe, apparently, I’m sure I’d be a huge failure. The whole secret to my success is avoiding anything I wouldn’t immediately be good at; ergo I’m never going to be anyone’s mother.

No, let me rephrase that.

I plan to be good at catching these damn cats, so after dumping additional tuna juice and handfuls of catnip all over the front step, I sit by the door and watch and wait.

Not more than ten minutes after I rebait the trap, Chuck Norris appears out of the bushes!!

Opening the front door startles him, but the lure of the tuna is too great and I’m able to scoop him up while he stuffs his maw with fish. I’m somewhere between euphoric and devastated—I’m thrilled to have him back, but Chuck’s the ringleader, so I sort of thought he’d bring everyone with him.

Chuck appears no worse for wear. Actually, he seems a bit smug.

Hope you enjoyed your walkabout, you little asshole, because it is never, ever happening again. I lecture Chuck on how he’s lost “catio” privileges before I resume my vigil by the door.

Every few minutes I leave my perch to go outside and call the others. Earlier I walked up and down the wood line with an armful of cat food cans, willing the sound of opening them to bring them running. Finding this unsuccessful, I left all the open cans out there for the coyotes so they’d be full and wouldn’t need to eat the tender young Thundercats.

About an hour later, I notice a gray ball of fluff in the darkness. Odin! It’s sweet little Odin! He’s come home! Carefully I pry open the door and attempt to grab him, but Odie’s way too skittish to stand still. He immediately streaks out into the darkness. But that’s good news because it means his instincts are to come back. Now all I have to do is convince him I’m not a scary monster.

I get Fletch and we both strap on our headlamps and begin to sweep the bushes. “You see anything?” I ask.

“Something over here has one and a half lasers. Unless there’s another creature who’s had eye surgery, I’m looking at Odie. Here’s what we’re going to do—I’ll flush him out and then you grab him,” Fletch says, cutting back behind the lilac bushes.

But every time Fletch herds Odin in my direction, he gets spooked and dashes under the boxwood hedges. I’m afraid we’re terrifying him, so I insist we speak in super-soothing tones. “Odie, sweetie, please come to your mama because she loves you,” I beg.

Fletch adds, “Nice, nice, little Odie, please go to your mama because I’m being eaten alive by mosquitoes and I’m about to pass out from blood loss, okay, good boy?”

“Stop that! He understands sarcasm,” I hiss.

“He’s afraid of paper bags and the dishwasher and thinks we’re scary monsters,” Fletch replies. “Sarcasm isn’t even in his top ten of what bothers him.”

After a solid hour of playing cat to Odin’s