The return of Stripe

Stripe went missing for several days. Yesterday Frida was in a frenzy looking for him. She usually sings for half and hour to an hour every morning and carries Stripe around, but yesterday she sang all day. She was still singing as happy hour approached and stopped only to yearn for the cheese we were nibbling at sunset.

I spent about half an hour looking for Stripe during the morning and instead found eight or nine rubber balls and fuzzy balls under the corner cupboard in the living room, where they had been batted out of reach. I cleaned them off and Frida took up with several of them, one at a time, as substitutes for Stripe. I promised Frida that I would look more for Stripe the next day. She was inconsolable.

This morning Frida seemed to have forgotten about Stripe and was particularly interested in the rubber balls. Nevertheless, after my second cup of tea I fulfilled my promise to look for Stripe, an all out room-to-room top-to-bottom search with a flashlight. The first place I looked was our closet in the big bedroom. The cats are not allowed in the closet, so naturally their favorite game is trying to get into the closet. We keep a small stick in the track to keep them from pushing the sliding doors open.

As I had looked everywhere that Stripe is usually found around the house, the logical place to start the search seemed to be the closet that the cats can't get into. First I looked under the small chest of drawers where I keep my scarves and pajamas. No Stripe.

Next I looked among the shoes. No Stripe. As I was leaving the closet, the laundry caught my eye. Just to be thorough, because I said I would, I pulled the laundry to one side. There was Stripe at the bottom of the pile. I took him to Frida. She didn't swat him as she usually does when he has gone missing. Instead she ignored him and continued singing with the rubber ball. It's going to take a long time for her to forgive him for this desertion.

When it because clear that Frida was giving him the cold shoulder, my husband suggested we put him back in the puzzle box for her to find. That's how Stripe first came into our house, and it is fitting that his journeys always lead back to it.

This weekend's was not the most dramatic reappearance of a favorite toy in our house. That would have to be the time Bob found Lily's pet rope in his pocket as we ate Thanksgiving dinner. He had put it there as he tidied up the house about a year before, the last time he had worn that particular pair of festive green corduroy pants, and forgotten about it. Like Frida, Lily had to find other toys to sing to until the prodigal pet rope returned.