Wednesday is trash pickup day in our neighborhood. Tuesday night, before going to bed, I opened the garage door and took some additional trash out to the road. Coming back in, I noticed that the door to the house, inside the garage, was ajar. I need to be careful about that, I reminded myself, because one of our cats could get out. I closed the garage door and headed to the bedroom.

Molly was on the bed. “Is Jordi in here?” I asked Pam. No, she hadn’t seen Jordi.

And I realized he probably got into the garage during those few seconds when the door was open. He was probably still there, under the vehicles.

But he wasn’t. Nor was he anywhere in the house–we searched up and down. Jordi had obviously escaped into the great outdoors. With just a few seconds of opportunity, he acted with swiftness and stealth.

This was 10:30. We searched the neighborhood until 1 a.m. I trekked miles, covering the same territory two or three times. I shined my flashlight into people’s yards, searched through their bushes, looking for that errant yellow cat (expecting, anytime, a homeowner to emerge with a shotgun, or police cars to corner me in a culdesac).

Jordi gets into a wandering mode and just heads in a direction, oblivious. In 2.5 hours, he could be anywhere. Pam and I sat on the truck tailgate, not knowing what else to do.

Out of ideas, I decided to drive around. I backed the car down the driveway and headed north out of the addition. Then my cellphone rang. “I found him,” Pam said.

Turns out that I passed Jordi on the road. He was just a few houses down, walking along the road toward our house. Pam spotted him in my headlights. The prodigal was returning.

But he was grounded. Couldn’t go outside for a whole day. And he seemed to know that he did something very very wrong.