Let me explain to you why I didn't write a blogentry yesterday... We spent all afternoon looking everywhere for ‘Spooky', the black cat of the house, the older and the only ‘girl' of the bunch. The cats here are not allowed to go outside , the doors of the house must always be closed so, every time we have to go outside, we are extremely careful in closing the doors behind us. Nobody wants to live the terrific experience of being responsible for one of the cats disappearing. - "How did she get outside?!" "How can it be possible?" "I'm gonna die".- Since we did not want to believe that Spooky was outside, we spent the first three hours in checking every corner of the house - the house is big, plus is full of stuff where a cat can easily hide in. Later on we had to admit she wasn't inside. So Ayke and me had to start the chase of the cat in the neighbourhood - "I'm living a nightmare" "This is not happening" "Can you stop crying, please?"- . After another three hours of exhausting search hunts - running around like idiots with kitten candy and calling ‘Spooooooooky' - we came back home without a cat. We were almost serene since we had already processed the trauma during the afternoon, stepping from the fear to the anger then the resignation and finally the acceptance of our fate. We were waiting for Jean-Yves to print some posters to be put in the street with Spooky's photo and the promise of a reward for anyone able to give us information of ANY kind.

Luckily, Sander - Ayke's boyfriend - arrived at home and in 10 minutes he found Spooky: she was in the little (and extremely dark) warehouse for the wood that we have in the garden, under the house.

We were right! She'd never left the house, she probably went there through the basements, NOT FROM OUTSIDE. By the way, there wasn't time for us to feel stupid, the hardest part had yet to come: we still had to get Spooky back home. The warehouse is small and dark and, obviously, it is full of wood. It was not possible to go inside, so we decided to go with the gentle way; ‘Sit and wait'. We switched of the ‘cat watch' between Ayke and her brother and me and Sander in the hope she would eventually get lured out by the lovely choices of food and her favorite brush... Since she decided to stay put in her little hiding spot, Sander - our hero - decided to use a long bamboo stick to gently make her move from that dark dusty hole. As soon as she was outside she started running away in the garden and we after her. It was a minute of real panic, again. I was hysterically trying to find where she had run to, with Ayke behind me yelling ‘ WHY DID YOU SCARE HER OUT, WE ARE GOING TO LOSE HER'.

Finally we made her head towards a door of the house and I was able to take her in my arms and get her inside. ‘Tutto è bene quel che finisce bene' - everything is good when it ends good. Everyone was so relieved and happy for the end of this real hell and our dinner was one of the best we've ever had since I arrived. My hands now are full of scratches though, and for the next couple of days I will need to stay at least 5 meters away from Spooky... for her own safety.