Last night I enjoyed a great dinner with two of my sisters at The Capital Grille.

But there’s a hard lesson I’ve learned since becoming a parent: those nights on the town with the girls always come at a price. This time, I paid in down feathers. Approximately 3500 of them.

With son #1 on the DL, we never really discussed how son #2 would get home from camp. My husband assumed I would pick him up, while I was certain – CERTAIN! – I could remain at work until the exact moment I was ready for a nicely chilled cocktail.

As I understand it, the “Uhh, are you coming to get your kid?” call was immediately followed by a mad dash through the house, resulting in a certain four-footed member of the family being locked out. To put this in perspective, she wasn’t dodging tow trucks on High Ridge Road or begging for scraps outside Donuts Delight. When she’s not terrorizing the bigger, dumber cat, she has full run of a not-small and fully fenced in yard. She uses the hours she spends outside perfecting her mouth-to-mouth rodent-in-mouth resuscitation technique with the dead (and my personal favorite, the nearly-dead) mice and chipmunks she finds strewn among the weeds.

But this – this was different. Locked outside? Don’t you people know who I am?

We’re her third family. I found her online and drove seven hours round trip to save her shaggy ass. She thinks the sun rises and sets on me. But at what price? Cashmere hoodie: gone. First pair of Puma Drift Cats: gone. 2 pairs of new running sneakers: gone. I’m still smarting from that one. Seven (no, I am not exaggerating) pairs of flip-flops: gone. The rest of the list includes a gently-chewed swimming bag and eight more pairs of shoes – all mine. I’d rather not think about that no-longer-manufactured pair of slingbacks with the sassy bow on the toe.

Safely back in the house and ready to exact her pound of flesh, she set her sights on my down comforter. Just a smidge smaller than a toddler bedspread and filled with the perfect amount of fluffy feathers, I loved that blanket. Was it her teeth? The dreaded dew claw? I’ll never know.

Over the past 10 months, she’s become confident of my love for her. No matter the damage, all is forgiven when she peeks her big brown eyes at me from under that one tuft of too-long hair.

While she wasn’t looking, I gave the Capital Grille leftovers to the bigger, smarter dog.