Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky.

Anubis has been with us for several months and we now have suspicions about how she became a stray. She was found in the Northern Wilds of Square State last July and languished at the Humane Society until we adopted her in September.

Anubis is a big, sweet bundle of issues. Most severe of these are separation anxiety and noise phobias. We tried crating her during work, but she ate her way through the steel doors of two airline crates and broke off many of her bottom teeth in the process. We tried restricting her to the laundry room and she ate through the door. We've lately begun just leaving her out, and she spends the day, quite happily, in her open crate.

However, fireworks, gunshots and thunder turn her into a quivering, panicky mess. (Remember she was found in July?) If we are home, she hauls all 60 pounds of herself into my lap during a storm, or crawls onto our pillows (and heads) if we happen to be in bed. This morning a nasty storm passed through and she was home alone, uncrated, listening to the thunder.

To understand what happened next, you need to know that we live in a ranch house, and many of the windows are of the old, steel louvered type. They open with a crank and the screen (or storm) is hooked to the inside frame. Because of the louvers, I figure only the thinnest and most determined of thieves would attempt to gain entry that way, and because my neighbors are retired and home all day, I leave the windows open while we're at work.

Anubis panicked during this morning's storm. She found the open window in my daughter's bedroom, a window with a sill approximately 4.5 feet above the ground. Somehow, she got up to the level of the window, ripped through the screen, and forced her chunky body through the louvers and fell 6 feet to the ground. Then she scaled the fence into the neighbor's back yard, and entered their livingroom through their patio door.

Apparently she needed someone's lap to sit in.