Yesterday evening, through a bizarre set of circumstances, our front door was left open for about three hours without us realizing it. Our three pampered and indoor cats reacted to this in various ways… Oliver Bert-tholomew Purrington (the youngest and smartest) came upstairs to let us know about it, and when he was unable to make us understand what he was trying to tell us, explored the outdoors until he got cold, then came back in on his own.

The other two apparently stayed in the house, and were visited by at least one of the neighborhood’s several outdoor cats. Predictably, they were traumatized… Winston (“Winnie the Pooh,” an extremely nice cat, but to put it charitably, is as thick as two short planks, as well as being the original fraidy-cat) hid under our bed until we pried him out late last night, and then hid in the basement until we made him come out and eat this morning. His sister Salem, a.k.a. “Fluffzilla,” recovered much more quickly… she was herself before we went to sleep.

All of that is fairly irrelevant to the purpose of this post, which is to point out this Slashdot posting describing recent research that suggests that cat owners are one-third less likely to die from heart attacks. I just wonder whether human ownership by felines does the same for them… for Winston’s sake, I hope so. 🙂