It’s Never As Bad As You Imagine

May 6th 2025

I finished lunch and put the dishes in the sink.

Grabbed my laptop from the back patio along with my pens and notebooks and headed up the stairs to my office.

Lotus thumped up the steps behind me, her hairless little tail dancing happily, and found a spot to curl up on the windowsill.

I spent a little over an hour printing out essay drafts, stapling pages together, scribbling notes in blank spaces to be filled in the coming months.

Lotus stretched and meowed as the printer spit out its last page and I checked the time.

It was a little early for the kitties’ dinner but if I fed them now I could get a good workout in before starting on ours.

I expected to hear our other cat Rygel bouncing down the stairs when I set their food bag on the counter, but there was only the low hum of the refrigerator and the sound of neighborhood kids playing outside.

I looked up at the ceiling, waiting to hear his little feet land on the carpet.

I looked at Lotus who was doing circles on the countertop like a hungry little shark,

Where’s your brother?

I headed up the stairs and checked the pillowy caverns of our comforter where they both love to burrow for their afternoon naps.

I looked under the bed.

I checked the closet.

I opened our bathroom door.

I checked the patio, under the furniture, in the downstairs bathroom, and then to the pantry.

Not a peep.

At this point I was surprised I wasn’t panicking, I was just confused.

I knew he was around, but where?

My legs started moving toward the front door and I thought,

Might as well check behind every door.

I twisted the lock, turned the handle, pulled the door toward me — and there he sat.

He cheerfully slithered through the open doorway and galloped into the house crying for his supper.

Baby boy! How the hell did you get outside!?

I picked him up and hugged him to my cheek, checking to see he was alright.

No new tattoos.

No signs of a bar fight.

No ankle monitors.

He was perfectly fine.

I made their dinner and he scarfed it down and zipped across the kitchen to play on his cat tree as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

I stood at our kitchen island in a bit of a daze, replaying the last couple hours in my mind.

I was on the patio for at least an hour doing budgeting… then up to the office for another… then came downstairs…

No screens out on the windows.

The front door was locked.

I don’t get it.

I thought about the time before we had him, when Lotus was just a year old.

Baby Lotus, such a sweet little squirrel! Authors Photo

I woke up one morning surprised to see our bedroom door was shut and when I opened it, there she was curled up just on the other side of it sound asleep.

I looked back into our bedroom and then down at her.

Our bedroom door opens into the room.

She was no bigger than a baby bunny.

Had she decided to saunter about the house in the wee hours and command the door to shut quietly behind her?

Neither my husband or I could make sense of it.

Now Rygel it seemed had managed to pull the same trick.

Rygel checkin’ things out. Authors Photo

He’s such a tiny wild little batty. Authors Photo

As I stood there in our kitchen unsure if I was feeling more grateful, astonished, or unsettled, I heard a voice in my head say,

“Your worst nightmare happened, and everything’s alright. It’s never as bad as you imagine.”

That was one of my worst nightmares!

That one of them would get outside and run away in a panic.

But Rygel had gotten outside somehow, and he didn’t run away.

He sat right there on the welcome mat and took a nap.

He didn’t seem bothered at all.

In fact the little bat seemed quite smug the rest of the evening. Having been a man about town for a couple hours, he was cultured now.

Worldly.

He would surely hold this over his older sister.

He knows things.

He’s seen things.

He’s spent time on his own out in the wild.

It’s never as bad as we imagine.

And we tend to forget that even when those fears do come to fruition at times, they actually put a little bounce in our step and a scandelous squint to our eye.

We know things.

We’ve seen things.

We’ve been alone out in the wild and lived to tell the tale.

I love you. Thank you for reading!