Settle down, while I tell you a tale full of intrigue and mystery. Well, some mystery, anyway.

As I set off for work yesterday, I looked around for the heavy walking shoes that I usually wear on my bike. We don’t have any fancy dedicated shoe storage, so I usually put them on the floor of the hall, next to the stairs. One of the pair was there, where I expected it to be, but there was no sign of the other. Cursing a bit because I was already late, I lifted bags and other stuff in the hall to see if it had somehow got covered up, but there was no trace of the missing shoe.

I couldn’t understand it. I must have come in wearing both shoes the last time I wore them, because they are pretty chunky. Tired as I am when I get home some days, I’m pretty sure I would remember if I was clomping around shod uni-pedally. In the end I wore another pair and cycled to work trying to reconstruct when I had last worn the shoes. We’ve had a bit of a mini-heatwave the past week, so I’ve been wearing my Crocs on the bike instead of the walking shoes. Nothing unusual popped out of my memory about the last time that I had worn them: I knew that I hadn’t, for example, absent-mindedly taken off one shoe and placed it in the fridge. Hmm.

Later that day, I phoned Mr. Bsag and asked him if he had any luck finding the lost shoe during the day. He had looked everywhere I could think of, but hadn’t turned it up. Now I was feeling rather disconcerted. Surely a burglar wouldn’t break into the house and steal only one very worn and grubby shoe?

When I got home, I took off my footwear and glared at it on the floor of the hall, daring one of the pair to disappear. Still pondering the conundrum, I went into the living room and closed the curtains at the front. As I did so, I glanced down behind the TV, which sits on a large media cabinet. You can probably guess what’s coming.

There, nestled in a large and fluffy cloud of shed cat hair¹, was my lost shoe.

Suddenly I remembered Bianca playing with the laces of this pair a few days previously. The only explanation that I can come up with is that she started playing with and when she had ‘killed’ the shoe, dragged it off to her furry secret lair behind the TV, which is where both our cats go to escape the Terror of the Vacuum Cleaner. At least now I know where to look when footwear goes missing for no apparent reason.