Where's Mommy?

When Peep woke up on Sunday morning, the Mommy was already dressed. That was very unusual, because Peep always got up first, and usually had to wake the Mommy up. The Mommy and the Daddy had been talking for days about Mommy leaving to go to Virginia. She wasn’t sure that Virginia was a nice place, because sometimes Mommy and Daddy looked sad when they talked about it. Well, it had to be nicer than Tibet. No place was worse than Tibet, where you got shots and there were scary cats and dogs.

Within an hour or so, the Mommy had driven off in her car. She’d hugged and kissed Peep, and even tried to drag her under the blankets. Didn’t the Mommy know that Peep hated being under the covers? She couldn’t breathe under there! After Mommy left, the Daddy just sat at the table for a few minutes, got up, had some coffee, sat back down and just stared at the door. I don’t know what the big deal is, thought Peep. She’ll be back this afternoon, she always comes back in the afternoon. Or maybe the evening. But she’ll be back to clean my poo box. No one else can clean the poo box the way the Mommy can.

By dark, Peep was getting a little worried, particularly since LT had told her that the Mommy was going to be gone for a long time, like maybe even a week. LT is smart, and understands about things like time. The Peep knew about morning and evening and hungry, and thought she understood tomorrow sometimes, but she didn’t know how long a week was. It sounded like it might even be longer than a day. She wasn’t sure how she could get along without the Mommy for that long.

Peep walked into the office, where the Daddy was looking at the little screen on his desk. It showed different pictures sometimes, but since they were almost never mice or food, Peep didn’t care about them. The Daddy looked sad again. He’d been in and out all day, and had talked to Peep, LT and Rudy a lot. He’d told them that Mary Rose (which was the Mommy’s other name) was gone for a while, and he would take care of them. Now he was just staring at that screen. Peep meowed, because her dry food dish was almost half empty, and it wasn’t crunchy fresh anymore. She meowed again, and when Daddy didn’t get up, she jumped on his desk and sat on the board with all the little boxes on it. Daddy said, “Peep, don’t do that,” so Peep got off and meowed next to him. She sang to him and asked him for food and rubbed against his arms until he got up and fed her.

Peep ate some food (the Daddy had given them yummy squishy food AND crunchy food. That was really good. Almost as good as the Mommy does, although there wasn’t any bacon. Peep curled up on the fleecy soft thing that the Daddy had put on the trunk, tucked her nose in her tail and went to sleep. As she fell asleep, she thought to herself that the Mommy would probably be back when she woke up in the morning. She’d better be, or the poo box wouldn’t smell very good, and she’d have to go back to going under the bed.