My anxiety is catching up with me

I let my husband's cat out yesterday morning, after which he told me that he wanted to keep the cat inside during the day.  He usually lets the cat out whenever the cat (whose name is Boss, which is a TERRIBLE name for a cat because it gives him serious delusions of grandeur) wants to go out, so I was surprised that he was upset.  Nevertheless, the cat was out of the bag (or the house, hahahahaha, I amuse myself so much), and we had to get to work and that was that.

Our neighbors have two cats that spend a lot of time outside, and my husband has observed Boss sitting on the corner with one or both of these cats, and possibly other neighborhood cats, in the mornings.  I've started calling it the Corner Cat Conclave, or the Corner Cat Coffee Klatch.  Boss is usually quite disagreeable with other cats, but he seems to be mellowing out in his old age, and their little get-togethers seem to be pretty tame.

Generally, after being outside for a while, Boss is desperate to get back in and have a little snack, so we were surprised to get home yesterday afternoon and Boss was nowhere to be found.  We checked our front courtyard multiple times, looked under the cars of all of our neighbors (not suspicious behavior AT ALL!), and walked down to the Corner Cat Conclave location periodically, calling his name, which made me feel ridiculous.  I also call him Bossy-Poo, which he loves and sound much more manly.  At this point, D was starting to freak out about where Boss could possibly be, since we haven't lived in our new town that long.  I imagined finding his broken body lying in the road somewhere.

After dinner, we went to run errands, and drove around the neighborhood a bit more, and when we got back, we walked around the corner to look a bit farther afield.  The neighbor's orange cat was lounging on their front porch.  Their Siamese cat was around the corner on someone else's front lawn.  I spotted the back end of another cat squeezed in between an RV and a hedge (I'm assuming his/her front end was in the hedge, but it was hard to tell), but no sign of Boss.  It has been so hot lately that a lot of neighbors have been leaving their garage doors open a bit to get air circulation through, and some of them even leave their garage doors completely open.  It seemed likely he had gone into another house.

Side note: My old neighborhood may have seemed nicer, what with all the nosy neighbors patrolling and enforcing arcane rules, and we lived in a court for heaven's sakes, but the garage door was left open one night right after my last surgery (and I totally blame Boss for it, due to his habit of waiting until the last second then darting under the closing garage door and causing it to reopen after D or I have gone into the house) and my extremely expensive road bike was stolen.  And it's not like it was out in the open - at that point, our exterior lights were out, so even seeing that the door was open was difficult, and the nice bike had a TON of stuff piled in front of it, so getting it out would have required some serious rearranging.  WHILE WE WERE HOME!  And sleeping just on the other side of the wall.

OK, so anyway, we walked around like idiots calling for Boss, noticed that at least one neighbor had a pet food bowl out on their front porch, figured Boss wasn't coming home because he'd been feasting at someone else's expense, and decided to head home and wait him out.  Of course, as soon as we turned around, we heard a sound and there he was, running down the sidewalk after us.  D picked him up and carried him home and decided he needs another collar with tags this time.  I wonder how long he'll wear this one before he takes it off and leaves it somewhere.

I also read in the comments on a blog yesterday about dogs with seizure disorders who actually have brain tumors, and now I'm freaked out about Lola.  She's been rubbing her face with her paws lately, and at first I was worried about foxtails, but now I'm worried about a tumor.  She does seem to have allergies or asthma, so it could be something like that too, or it could be nothing.  But after going four months without a seizure, she suddenly had three in the month of June, and it worried me.  A lot.

My husband thinks it's the stress of the TWW that's getting to me, and he's probably right.  What if I'm not pregnant and we have to start all over?  What do we do next?  What if I am pregnant?  How can we possibly take care of a baby???  What if something bad happens to it?  Lucky him, he's leaving today for the next five days, basically until the end of the TWW, and he'll be working the whole time, so at least he'll have a distraction.  I'll be home all by myself, with only my ever-increasing anxious thoughts to keep me company.