gwyn | Someone needs to invent a kitty lojack.

I had the worst night last night. There's a lot of activity in my neighborhood around Independence Day and New Year's Eve, lots of fireworks and people running around screaming and partying. I don't let the cats out much, although with Olive that's a tough one, because she won't go potty indoors. And it was subfreezing last night, down to around 24 in my 'hood. When I was working in the yard yesterday, Ollie kept me company, but Blues wasn't having any of it because it was too cold, even though they both usually love to "help" me garden by climbing trees and shrubs, chasing each other around, and pulling apart my piles.

But at some point late last night, I think when I took some garbage out, Blues slipped out behind me and I didn't even know he was gone until a couple hours later. The fireworks were going like crazy, it was insanely loud and obnoxious at midnight, and I searched everywhere for him to no avail. I finally had to give up around 3:00 because I was so cold I couldn't warm my hands up no matter what. (I had early stages of frostbite in some fingers and toes once back in my mountaineering days, and I've never really been the same since.) I went to bed in my clothes so I could keep getting up and calling for him. I was so afraid, it being so cold and so noisy and just dangerous.

By dawn, I had gotten to the point where I figured he was probably dead; he never stays out since the big runaway adventure. It didn't seem likely that he was trapped in someone's garage since it was so late at night. I figured he might have gotten spooked by fireworks, run in front of a car or something, and gotten hurt and crawled off somewhere. I must have fallen asleep finally around dawn because it was getting light, but I was awakened by my cell phone beeping low battery noises, so I went to charge it, and saw a blur by the door. I'm totally blind without my glasses, but I caught the movement, and sure enough there the little shit was, apparently none the worse for 24-degree wear. I have got to start paying more attention to my feet when I go out -- he frequently follows me out to the garage and then gets trapped in there and I don't find him for hours. He's peed and pooped on everything in there because he gets stuck for so long.

He seems to love to do this -- when he disappeared for four days two years ago, he'd snuck out behind me then, too. I never seem to have trouble when I willingly let him out. He trips me all the time too, winding around my feet when I don't see him coming. And that's not counting him nearly dying two days after I brought him home. He is totally gonna put me in an early grave. I kept thinking all night, my dad's on the slow road out and my cat's probably dead -- happy fuckin' new year. So of course as angry as I am, I'm still kissing and hugging him like whoa today.

Anyway, so story reveals went up today on Yuletide. I was bummed no one else wanted to play on the guess my story game, because it would have been fun to write another story for someone.

I wrote a Justified story called Lesser Angels, for

shetiger. It's a view of Raylan from Tim Gutterson's point of view. I was really impressed by some of the Justified stories this year and sorry that the fandom hasn't gotten more love in all the recs. I was also interested to see that there were other stories from Tim's POV, and at least one other one that posits Tim as gay/bisexual, as mine did. I wonder if we're all going to get Jossed next season. I really enjoyed writing it, thinking about Raylan, and shetiger's request was really cool because it mirrored my own Justified request in so many ways it was bizarre. (And thanks so much to

crickwooder for the great comments on beta.)