Weather Extremes and a Mystery

Snow, freezing temperatures, more snow, ice, and rain.  The last 48 hours have seen all of these.  Over the weekend temperatures plummeted to zero and below.  Add high winds to that and it has been extremely cold.  This was followed  with some light snow on Saturday which meant lots of blowing drifting snow as well. Monday was Presidents' Day and in the afternoon we had some more snow.  But the temperatures were rising as well so we had snow, which changed to sleet and finally to rain.  This morning when we woke up everything was icy.  However, the temperatures continued to rise and so by 9 it was warm enough that it was raining and the snow and ice was melting.  Most of the schools had a two hour delay today, but School District of Lancaster was closed so hubby was home until mid afternoon when he went to see his afternoon client.  By about 3 the sun was shining brightly.  At least a lot of snow melted in the last 12 hours, but that also led to flooding in some areas.

We had stayed home all day Sunday which was also Valentine's Day because of the extreme cold.  But the strangest thing happened in the middle of the night. We were both sleeping soundly when suddenly we awoke to hear a cat meowing.  We do not have a cat!  It sounded like the cat was right in our bedroom with us.  Hubby got up to check it out.  He looked around the room and the house, but there was no cat.  He did, however, find that our visitor had left a present for us in the middle of the living room floor.  Hubby is always an early riser and is often awake anywhere from three to four in the morning, so he decided to just get up.  Even though he looked some more he couldn't find the cat.  When I got up we looked some more - under furniture, in closets, anywhere we thought a cat might hide.  But no cat!  All day Monday, I kept my eyes open for a cat or even evidence of a cat.  Nor did we see or hear anything overnight or today.

So the mystery is where did that cat come from?  The doors and windows were all locked.  We had not been out during the day.  Did he somehow slip in when the door was opened to let our son-in-law in that morning? Or did he come in when we took something out to the sunroom?  Or did he somehow find a hold large enough to crawl through from under the house? And where did he go? We just don't know. That still remains a mystery!