The diamond heist

It was Thanksgiving, the year after I moved into my first house. My parents had driven up to the Edmonton area, and we were all going to my sister's house for dinner. I was just as obsessed with redecorating then as I am now, so Mom and Dad stopped in at my house to check out the updates to the house before we all carried on to my sister's house. They didn't stay very long; just long enough to say hello to Cotton and Winter - who has always greeted visitors at the front door - and do a quick tour of the house.

I remember that as I put my coat on, I looked over at my mom, who was beside me, and noticed her earring. Mom and Dad had celebrated 30 years of marriage the year before, and my mom was wearing the diamond earrings that he'd given her.

My parents aren't flashy people. They like good quality, but they don't often spend a lot of money on something that doesn't have a definite use. Jewelry hasn't ever been a high priority, so these are the biggest, clearest diamonds that she'd ever had - and a real treat.

Anyway, I point out that I'd noticed my mom's earring - and only the one side - because a few hours after arriving at my sister's house, my mom realized that one of the earrings was gone. She screeched and we all dropped everything to look for it. When we didn't find it, the night was pretty much over. We packed up and left.

I was dropped off with instructions to look long and hard for the diamond at my place, while my parents rushed home to look at their house. (Truth is, I really didn't look very hard.... they'd only been there a few minutes; and I suspected that my mom had forgotten to put the second earring on.) When they got home, they ripped apart their house and van in search for the diamond. Everything was vacuumed. My dad even swept the garage floor and sifted through the contents of their central vac canister, to look for it.

They didn't find the diamond.

Those earrings were nicer than anything she ever thought she'd own, and my mom was devastated to know that she'd lost one. But, time went on. Winter came, then Christmas, and then Easter. My mom was disappointed, but the rest of us moved on.

Spring had arrived, and I started concentrating on gardening. I'm pretty single-minded, and when I've got a gardening project on my mind, that's all I want to think about. That was back when I was still trying to grow tea roses, which have to be dug into the ground and covered up for the winter. I was focused on digging them back up and replanting them when I rooted through to the very back of the closet and pulled out my old gardening clogs. I pulled out all my gardening tools, put on my coat and slipped on the clogs.

And something stabbed me in the toe.

That's right. SOMEBODY had put my mom's diamond earring inside of my gardening clog. That shoe had been far too out of the way for the earring to have accidentally fallen into it. No, it had to be a deliberate (although perhaps not malicious) act.

The cat did it.

I've mentioned before that Winter the cat likes to hide objects in small, hard to access areas. Usually, he sticks to shoving pens under the couch, or dog kibble under the new dining table. Sometimes, though, he gets a little more inventive, like the time that he stuffed his catnip laden fluff ball into the toe of my friend's tennis shoe. Other times, he's been known to shove twist ties down the slots of the register. This time, he'd stuffed my mom's diamond earring into my gardening clog.

That was a fun phone call to make. Winter and I earned a spot at the top of my mom's good book when I told her the earring had been found. She was so happy, she was even willing to focus on the fact that the earring had been found, instead of dwelling on it having been hidden for almost 6 months.

You know what... come to think of it, though, I don't think that she ever did give him a reward for finding it for her.