I know, I know, hardly news. But when I awoke this morning, Qubit did not greet me. This, also, is not remarkable; ever since I graduated and entered a stay-at-home limbo period, she has gotten used to thinking of me as a useful part of her surroundings, not to be taken special notice of. Do you break into your important sleeping and eating routine to greet your sofa and bookshelves? Breakfast done, I thought, “Still no cat? I am going to TIME her and tell Ryan how many hours it took for her to think she might want to see me.”

I just finished lunch, and suddenly it hit me that the timer was still ticking. Four hours and twenty minutes, and that cat had not tried to shove the lapdesk out of my lap, walk on my laptop, or anything else of the sort. I hadn’t even heard her scratching my toilet paper to shreds or trying to get into the cabinets to sit in my clean pots and pans.

I admit it, I panicked a bit (she always gets me, this cat). I checked my study, the bedroom, every cabinet, the bathtub, empty cardboard boxes for packing/Qubit qastles. Then I remembered Ryan telling me about a time recently when he had panicked about a missing Qubit, and found her in his office closet. Sure enough, all my whistling and calling and shaking of treat bags had been unable to dislodge her from her perch, in an open bin of stuff and storage media three feet up in the back corner of his office. I shook the treats again. She blinked.

Four hours, forty minutes and counting.