This might be long winded...
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It was almost a very dark first Mother's day in the younger Lloyd household...Actually let me go further back than that. We used to have two cats, Soren and Sofie. Due to bad habits of Sofie's part, she was taken down to my parents to adapt and become a barn cat last summer. She has not been seen since-very much to my detriment and sadness-even though she made it so it had to be. We were left with one cat-Soren, who is a remarkably good cat, a little over weight, and sometimes annoying, but overall good. He did not really like the little life form we brought home last December, but slowly has grown to tolerate her (who know what will happen when she starts to walk and chase him, he he). Anyways, he hasn't really been receiving as much attention lately, which only made the events of this weekend worse.
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Soren likes to go out onto our deck. He has been there a million times in his 2 3/4 years in our apartment. When it starts to get cold, we let him out and shut the door, when he scratches and we let him back in. We have never forgotten him there long term, until Saturday night. Jake let him out onto the deck somewhere between 7 and 8 pm. When it started to get cold, Jake closed the door and left the light on so that he would remember to check before he went to bed.
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The weekend before last we purchased some flowers and Jake had been out there planting. We have 4 flower boxes along the edge of the wall. When Jake was heading to bed, he looked out onto the back deck, no Soren. He also noted that there was only 3 flower boxes, but figured he had put it on the ground when planting, he also figured either he couldn't remember letting Soren in or I had done it.
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Sunday morning Jake got picked up early for church. I thought the night had been unusually quiet (we had been having to throw Soren out of the pack and play on a fairly consistent basis at night). But I didn't take too much note of it, I was trying to get Elizabeth and myself ready, by myself. (I told Jake when I got to church that he couldn't leave me because I am not cut out to be a single Mom. I don't know how anyone could do it.) After church we went out to Jake's parents for the day returning at 9:45 pm.
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Elizabeth was hungry and tired, so was I-well the tired part. I started looking around, usually Soren greets us at the door, but no he hadn't. We looked in all the usual places...then the unusual places...when I saw it. No flower box, I thought maybe Jake put it on the ground. No flower box on the ground. I asked Jake...he got a fearful look on his face and said that he was pretty sure he had let Soren in the night before.
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I went over to the edge and looked over, there three floors below, was the flower box. Panic began to set in. Soren was most assuredly not in the apartment. Jake went down to find him, he couldn't (at least he survived the drop). I went down, nothing, but it was dark. Hope faded, but we would go down at first light and see what we could see.
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5:45am, Jake went down to look. A couple of minutes later I hear him on the stairs, in he came with a dirty, wet, hungry, sore, tired, mobile, scared, poor baby Soren-Alive.
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All that to say, that Soren took a flying fall off our third story balcony, and lived, with only some sore muscles-nothing broken. Amazing Grace, and Thanks to God. He is home sleeping it off and needless to say we will be paying more attention to him here after.