Columnist John Katsilometes: At a loss to explain the humans

John Katsilometes is the Sun features editor. His column appears Mondays. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-2327.

Clyde has always ached to leave the house. His favorite trick is to hide around the corner behind the ficus and wait for one of us to come home with our arms loaded with bags.

Then it's bang-zoom! Out the door in a flash.

Not that Clyde makes it far. He hits the last step before the landing and stops to roll around. That's when we gather him up with his tail puffed out, and redistribute him back inside. It's become a sort of daily routine.

See, Clyde is a house cat. So is his sister, Bonnie. Clyde is more antsy to explore what's out there, always has been, and a few days ago Clyde finally slipped out.

No one noticed. We haven't seen him since.

Any pet owner can relate. You first notice he is not where he usually is; that he didn't race for the door today. He doesn't answer when called, and you start searching even the most unlikely spaces -- maybe he's in the dishwasher! -- before reaching the numbing conclusion he's left the building.

You comb the neighborhood in vain and begin the public notification process that you've lost your pet. For us, this meant sticking photos of Clyde on cork boards out by the mailboxes. There are several of these mail pods in our condo complex. When residents need to make an announcement, they just pin a message on the cork board (this is how communication worked before e-mail) and await a response.

But recently the complex's Homeowners' Association, a mysterious but mobile organization that sets guidelines for anyone living in the complex -- homeowners or not -- stenciled its own message on all cork boards. It reads: "For H.O.A. Use Only."

I have always referred to this collection of busybodies as "HA." Performing the work of God, HA sets such life-saving rules as making sure automobiles in the complex are free of dust. HA makes sure there's not too much oil leakage in the parking lot and that porch storage is kept "under control."

Fearless HA representatives also ensure the lap pool is used only for swimming laps -- none of this "wading" nonsense -- and if HA ever decided to pay acute attention to dental hygiene, officials would order monthly flossing clinics in the rec room.

By attempting to take over exclusive intellectual property of the cork board, HA put us in a tricky situation. We're not rule-breakers in spirit, but we also needed to alert our neighbors that a cat unaccustomed to being outside for even 15 minutes had been missing for days.

We were counting on HA to give some precious cork board space to the commoners. We were hoping HA -- whoever or whatever it is -- had a soul.

So we pinned up the photos and awaited word. After the first day, nothing. Same for the second. On the third we checked the mail and, in a grimly predictable turn of events, Clyde's photo (all of them, as it happened) had been taken down.

Without a doubt the dirty work was that of a HA official, probably on his way to fingerprinting new tenants. Nice work, J. Edgar.

Our best hope has been that someone in the complex has our cat. We've always relied on the compassion of other humans. But after the latest incident with HA, that approach is far from foolproof.

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