@Pennycat denies involvement in disappearance of Twitteratti @Sockington
Sockington is Missing (Update: FOUND) — HUZZAH SOCKS ARMY

UPDATE: SOCKS HAS BEEN FOUND. He was underneath a shelf in my office, wrapped in a curtain, completely spooked and terrified. For the first time in years, he spent hours completely silent, not even reacting to hands, flashlights and food being waved inches from where he was. We’ve got him resting in a bedroom and letting whatever freaked him out get out of his system.

As I posted on Jason’s blog post and Flickr page showing a very subdued Sockington, it’s a huge relief when a missing cat is found safe after all.

When we first got Riley, he hid behind the green couch the morning after we brought him home, and I was almost late for work as I looked for him all over the house. Finally, frantically, I called David to ask if he remembered leaving the garage door open for any length of time… but he’d seen Riley earlier (he leaves for work before I do). I had looked behind the couch at least twice, but the third time I noticed a suspicious bump in the dust ruffle at the back. When I lifted it up, there was Riley, bein’ all cute and sleepy, with a little “what??” meow and everything. The sense that I was about to drown in panic drained away like a wave off a steep beach, “whoosh-shush-shush.”

However, we’ve come home to find Riley’s collar pulled off, and it’s obvious he’d gotten it caught in something. We’ve been careful since then to always buy the “Safe Cat” breakaway collars, and we try to be careful about not letting the long cords for the Venetian blinds drag on the floor. Also, we had to take care of a little matter with the box spring, similar to that depicted on I Can Has Cheezburger? earlier:

Riley had exploited some holes in the bottom liner of the box spring (perhaps originally made by Stuey back in the day) and had become fond of climbing up in there in the early morning to bump around beneath us, rather in the manner of the annoying Ghost in Hamlet. As in “You hear this fellow in the cellarage?” Sometimes we felt him bumping the mattress as he moved around, which I think was part of his early morning “Feed meh!” strategery.

Our fix was to deconstruct the bed, remove the liner, and replace it with…. screening! Yes, we tucked all the raw cut metal edges under before staple-gunning… pretty sure of it… I hope. But Riley can’t get into the box spring anymore, so now he just gets up on the bed and walks on my head for a while.

He is now safely installed in his Upstairs Basket, which is lined with my old Blue Blannie. All is well.