Home Again, Jiggity Jig!

It was fun going to the Zoo and Wild Animal Park, but it is nice to be home again, the more so because the cats did not take our absence very well. Jeremy called this morning, just as we were beginning to explore the Wild Animal Park, to tell me that the cats had been freaked out. They didn't come to him when he called, which is unusual because they love him, particularly Shadow. And Whistler, he said, even more strangely, refused to eat. This is a cat who lives to eat, so when HE won't eat, something is really wrong. Jeremy said he couldn't find Shadow anywhere, though he finally did find her on the top shelf of the closet in what had been his room. And he left the food for them in places he thought they would find and eat it--Shadow's up on the cat tree, where Whistler wouldn't venture, and Whistler's somewhere else. I still haven't found where, so I had to use a different bowl for his dinner.
I must have known somehow that there was a problem because I had a nightmare, and found myself saying that I wanted to go home very early this morning, when I love to go away for weekends like these, and love the Zoo and Wild Animal Park. But it seems to have all turned out okay.
The animals were interesting. We got to watch the young gorilla toddler, Frank, play tag with the children staring at him through the glass. He made his entrance by leaping up and beating his breast, vocalising, which delighted everyone, especially kids. Then he raced up and down the enclosure, putting his hands on the spot where children in the front row, looking in at him through the glass, had put theirs. He would look back and hoot, as though he wondered why they weren't following him off into the back corners of the enclosures.
We also got to spend a lot of time very very close to two hippos, floating in the water, a polar bear, digging a hole in the sand like a gigantic dog, and two sleeping lionesses. I was so close I could see the lion's tongue protruding slightly from her mouth, and gauge the size of her gigantic footpads, so like our own cats' but so very much larger.
It is grounding for me to be so close to these animals. I feel as if things make sense when I spend time with them, particularly the large orangutan, who sat and faced the crowd for at least 10 minutes, watching us watch him.