Lost: orange tabby cat

Okay, Lost is starting to confuse the kumquats outta me. (Yeah, that’s right. Kumquats. Not mangoes, not apples, not strawberries, not even pomegranates. Kumquats.) I mean, it’s always been a bit confusing, but lately it seems even more so. It’s like every time they explain a little bit of what’s going on, they add a few more questions to make sure we keep tuning in every week. Yesterday’s episode was strange, because the flashbacks seemed to be trying to paint Juliet as some kind of innocent victim in the Others’ bizarre little game. And then at the end, we find out she’s STILL working with them. She has Jack completely convinced that she’s trustworthy (or DOES she? Wouldn’t it be great if we eventually discover that JACK is the one playing mind games?) and is apparently trying to gain the trust of everyone else in the camp. In last week’s episode, when Kate and Juliet were handcuffed together and Kate finally snapped, I was SO hoping she would totally kick Juliet’s butt. There’s something about Juliet that has really annoyed me since the first time she started popping up in episodes… I do NOT like her at all…

But at least now we know how the Others seem to know all about the castaways – Crazy Russian Guy had a whole audio-visual setup with links to the outside world, and apparently access to background checks on all the plane passengers. That’s all well and good, but it leaves me with a question – so the plane crash really WAS exactly what it appeared to be? A random plane crash? A plane that fell out of the sky from cruising altitude? And we’re still supposed to believe there were survivors? This whole time, I’ve been assuming there was SOME explanation for the fact that several dozen people survived a plane that fell 30-something thousand feet. I couldn’t really come up with a logical explanation myself, but I figured it was the writers’ job to figure that out. Even a NOT-so-logical explanation would do. I don’t know… maybe they’re saving it for some other time… maybe the island is really, really soft…

And speaking of things that are lost… my mom dropped by with some Seattle’s Best coffee this morning, and while I was standing in the driveway talking to her, a woman in a minivan stopped at the end of my driveway and motioned me over. It was a neighbor from a few houses down (not the one next door who hates my noisy dog…). She asked if I’d seen her orange tabby cat, who’d been missing for a month. And, interestingly enough, I HAVE seen an orange tabby hanging around my house the last few days. In fact, the first time I saw it was the day it was so cold and we were getting rain and sleet – that poor little cat was huddling under some bushes outside the house across the street. And yesterday, my mom and I noticed the same cat lounging around under the bushes in front of my own house. It was wearing a collar, so we tried to get close enough to see if there was a tag with a phone number or something, but the cat ran away before we could get too close. I’m sure it must’ve been my neighbor’s cat, so she gave me her phone number in case I happen to see the tabby hiding in my bushes again. But isn’t it strange, how the cat is so close to its home and can’t seem to find its way back? (I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I won’t attempt to find it right now…)

When I was twelve we moved from Austin to Georgetown, which is a small town north of here (it’s much larger today than it was when I lived there, but still small by “city” standards). And for some reason, our house seemed to attract stray animals (or perhaps mom just never had the heart to turn them away :)). At one point, we had four dogs and four cats. The dogs pretty much stayed indoors, but the cats liked to be outside when they could. We never thought this was a bad idea, until one of the bratty, horrible little monster-children that lived next-door to us shot an arrow through one of our cats. The poor thing made it back to our garage, the arrow straight through its body, and our vet was kind enough to open his veterinary hospital late at night for an emergency visit. Somehow that arrow missed every major organ in the cat’s body, and after a bit of recovery, she was fine. She lived to a ripe old cat age, hopefully with no scary kitty flashbacks (I don’t think cats have very good memories…). And now, all I can think is that the boy who was cruel enough to shoot an arrow through our cat has grown into the kind of person who chops people up and keeps their body parts in his freezer. Seriously, if I could remember his name, I might call the FBI and provide them with an anonymous tip (um, you might want to check out so-and-so’s freezer… I don’t know, I just have a feeling…).

Hopefully the orange tabby will show up again some time soon, so it can happily return home. At least knowing the lost tabby was home would provide me with more closure than the Lost show has been dishing out lately…