Today, our cats are scheduled for their annual visit with Dr. Garrett, at the Idaho Humane Society veterinary clinic. This has necessitated keeping all three of them in the house for about six hours to be sure we make the 1 p.m. appointment.

Archie [aka Archimedes] and Tesla would normally stick around the house all day, in the yard, on the deck or inside, but Edison usually shows up only at mealtimes, sometimes hanging out for a couple hours, then disappears who-knows-where? till the next meal, which he has been known to skip upon occasion..

Early this morning, I put “DON’T LET CATS OUT” post-it notes on each of our door to the outside as a reminder to those of us for whom the annual feline outing may not be upper-most in our thoughts. It’s been a seasonably cool morning in the 60°s F, so it didn’t take long for all three cats to realize that their freedom to roam was being severely restricted. So was mine.

After the first hour or so, the caterwauling became intense. Not only were they crying to get outside, they were getting grumpy with each other. Cats are not particularly sociable animals. Eddie and Tesla have been together since birth. Archimedes, while of the same litter, was separated from them for several years before returning to the fold where, after a few years he has become tolerated (most of the time) by the others.

In the past few hours, there’s been little indication of comradery. There was an attempt by Tesla and Edison to break through the screen in my office window; Edison almost attacked the hands that feed him as I closed the window to thwart the attack. Meanwhile, Archie was dislodging the window-fan in the basement and escaping through the resultant opening.

So, I’ve resorted to caging all three of them a full two hours before their scheduled appointment. Now the fighting and caterwauling have lessened and are directed at the cages