Mia and the great outdoors.

Mia should learn not to ask too often for something, she just might get it. Over the past month or so, she's occasionally meowed plaintively for something, and near as I can tell, she's wanted to go out. (Surprisingly, she didn't want to be fed, and she didn't want company. She'd lead me to the sliding glass door and look at me and then look outside and then look back at me, and then slowly shake her head when I'd open the glass door but leave the screen door closed.) And evil person that I am, I wouldn't let her out. Of course, I'm not entirely sure why she wants to go out. When she sits in an open window and sniffs the outdoors, she doesn't react to any of the interesting things happening on the other side of the screen, like the neighborhood bunny rabbit and squirrels. Hmm. Maybe she's near-sighted, and needs little kitty glasses. Old as she is, she probably would need little kitty bifocals.

Anyway, today, she got her wish. Early in the afternoon, I carried her out to meet the neighbor, who had heard of Mia but never seen her, as Mia doesn't sit in open windows on that side of the house. The neighbor fussed over her and told her how pretty she was; all Mia wanted to do was to squirm and twist and get away. I was holding her too tightly for that. Later in the afternoon, we went out again, just onto the back porch. I put her down on the top of the railing, and she didn't like it much. It wasn't too narrow for her - it's maybe 4 or 5 inches across. She looked over the railing at the ground 8 feet below, and walked quickly along it back towards the house, jumped down onto the porch, and went back into the dining room. Perhaps she realized that it's actually more fun to stay inside where there's a pillow to sleep on, air conditioning for comfort, and what's-his-name to wait on her hand and foot. (Well, "paw and paw," to be precise.)