the return of bella

for some odd reason, b and i have the eternal privilege of living below cat ladies wherever we go. the l.a. apartment came complete with a pretty good one. and now, in pasadena, we have another cat lady directly above us. we hear her talking to her cats all the time but never see her out and about. she also scoots a rolling chair around the floor above us, sounding mysteriously similar to the "roller cat" noises we discovered with the l.a. lady.

i've never met this one, but for weeks and weeks we heard her out on the balcony directly above our bedroom window calling for her cat, bella. almost every night around midnight we'd hear "bella!.......bella!" [imagine that being yelled in a high-pitched whiny accented voice.] it was incessant. b started yelling it back to her after a few months of that, but she still never shut up [nor found her cat].

on sunday, we were sitting on the counch watching tv when i heard something in our building hallway. at first i thought it was a baby crying but we muted the tv and it sounded like a CAT. b snuck over to the door and peered out the peephole -- there was a cat sitting right in front of our door, meowing. i hate cats. i am allergic to them, but i also think they have major attitude and plus they are not cuddly in the least. and this cat only had part of a tail! gross.

b opened the door [to my complete horror. i could just imagine some rabid cat running into our apartment and wedging itself beneath our couch. i'd have to move out if that happened!] and tried to shoo it away but it held its ground. we figured it was bella -- she must have thought she was one floor up and probably couldn't understand why we wouldn't let her in. b shut the door and we went back to our show.

a couple hours later we went to bed and just as we laid down -- we heard meowing right outside our window. freaking cat was following us around! we started snickering at the attentive cat and then heard the sliding door above us open...and guess who came out. the cat lady! she said "bella! where have you been!" and i assume the cat jumped up into her waiting arms. we thought it was hilarious. we solved the case of the missing cat.