Ted Van Ted - The cat who deserves a Sue Grafton novel

When I went down to the basement one morning recently to pull a load of laundry from the washing machine, the usual suspects emerged - ragg wool socks, sweatshirts, chamois shirts . . . and a green polo shirt. A polo shirt? I haven’t worn one of those since September. So how did it end up in the wash at this time of year?

I racked my brain for a few minutes, searching for the answer. Have I been sleepwalking in my August duds? Was there an 85-degree day in November that I’ve erased from my memory?

And then it dawned on me.

As is usually the case when we have a mysterious occurrence in our house, the culprit is a brash coon cat named Ted. (Aka Teddy, Theodore and Ted Van Ted, the latter because he once turned on a radio in the dead of night, blasting Van Morrison's Moondance through the house.)

Teddy went on a rampage in our bedroom closet one day last week, upending carefully stacked piles of sweaters and littering the closet floor with clothing that had been too neatly organized to meet with his approval.

The laundry basket, which sits on the closet floor, was at ground zero when Teddy attacked. So the polo shirt presumably fell into the basket, from which I tossed it into the wash without a second glance. Only when I removed the clean laundry from the washer did I spot the wayward remnant of summer.

If writer Sue Grafton had not already released T is for Trespass in her series of so-called alphabet mysteries, our feline felon would have been more than happy with a novel in his honor entitled T is for Ted. 

Grafton just released U is for Undertow, so maybe Ted still has a chance as the author works her way through the tail end of the alphabet. How about V is for Van Ted? Or maybe W is for Wise Guy?