A Missing Pack Member

I am part of a pack. We're a weird looking pack; I mean, I'm devilishly handsome and furry and the rest of my pack are decidedly not on both counts. I walk on four legs while they teeter around on two.  And of course, there's the fact that we're completely different species. Still, a pack is a pack and we are meant to stick together and stick together we do, unless, of course, we don't.

You see, every once in a while, a member of my family disappears for a day or two. Sometimes he or she is on vacation and sometimes it's a business trip, but regardless of the reason for the temporary split, I always find the event traumatic because:

1. I never know when my family will be reunited
2. For each missing family member, my snack intake shrinks by a third
3. I’m never invited on the trip (which is both traumatic and incredibly rude).

Anyway, the most recent disappearance happened a couple of weeks ago and this time it was Sister who vanished.

Now, at first, as with most disappearances, I was blissfully unaware that Sister was planning on abandoning me. Sure, she left the house bright and early with her overnight bag in hand, but that usually meant that I was going out east and that she'd meet me there after work. But, when 5pm came and went without a trip out east, I started to become concerned. When she didn’t come home for dinner, I became suspicious. And when everyone else went to bed and she still wasn’t home, I fell into complete and utter despair.

That night, I was restless. I paced and paced and, when I eventually fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, I did so with my head resting under Sister’s chair. Pa theorized that I had fallen asleep looking for food that Sister had dropped.  He was wrong.  While snuffling around for food was an added bonus, the real reason why I camped out under Sister’s chair was that I knew that that would be the first place she would go once she got home. You see, her chair means that much to her (I can relate, I feel the same way about my spot on the couch).

The next morning, I was distressed to find that Sister was still missing.  During the afternoon, while Ma and Pa were at work, I briefly toyed with the idea of storming Sister's room and claiming her spot on the bed as my own (hey, if she's not going to be around to use it, someone else should), but I quickly felt bad about plotting to take advantage of the situation and fell back into a state of depression. 

I slept under Sister's chair again that night.

An Ithaca Waterfall

Around 5:30pm on the third day, Sister returned home and I was beside myself with excitement. My pack was back together and Sister had a lot of strange new smells on her that I needed to investigate (I found out that she had been in Ithaca, New York and, aside from going to a conference and meeting lots of people, she also went hiking).

That night I slept soundly on my pillow for the first time in two days.  All was right with the world (except for the part about not getting Sister's bed).