Thursday, 27 June 2002 | Jane

She rarely leaves the house, but when she does, it's usually just before a hurricane or a big thunderstorm. Tonight it was the latter, and she sat squatting underneath the Cougar as the rain fell around her on all sides. Meanwhile, I walked around the house in flip-flops and rain-soaked hair, calling her name and producing my best whistle while I gripped a fickle flashlight, the shadows around me perpetually shifting and disappearing.

Searching underneath the house always makes me nervous for both rational reasons and horror movie reasons. One of the rooms, I've locked, to discourage the homeless from camping out there, but the other room is still open. It's fairly spacious, with a dirt floor and stairs that stop dead at the ceiling, an old washer and dryer parked in the corner. As I exposed the dark corners with weak light and walked past wet plants that slapped me in the face, three of the wrong cats rubbed up against my ankles, asking the neighborhood sucker to give them more expensive cat food. Finally, with no help from her, I spotted her and chased her inside, and we both toweled off using our respective methods.

Last night she threw up her dinner in the shape of a cross.