Cleo was hit by a car two days ago. Not on the small city street where she lives, and not even on the busier frontage road nearby.

She was hit, or rather grazed, while trotting up the northbound ramp of the interstate highway. I picture her now, on her way to a shady spot of the next underpass, her left paw crooked out toward the cars in the slow lane, thumbing her way to where? Dallas? New York City? Canada? She changed her mind after the rough treatment she received from a truck - the driver stopping to chase her back down the ramp. She ran, the man in pursuit, to a two-story garage where a trio of post-pizza lunchers helped out with their cell phone to contact the City Registration office, find my phone number, and call me at work.

I met them at the garage, spent several minutes thanking them, checking Cleo over for broken bones, then I got her in the truck and took her to the vet where her wounds were stitched up, her road rash cleaned, and a cone put on her head.

This is the second time Cleo has run away in the last month. She was gone for four days while I was on vacation and my neighbor was looking after her and her mother, Patra. One Thursday night, Cleo decided to take her love downtown - squeezing out under the fence, trotting under the highway, winding her way between the quiet, dark skyscrapers to a small beer garden near the capitol building. She crashed an office party out on the patio, slipping under picnics tables, brushing against legs, drinking beer out of plastic cups and accepting small gifts of weiner snitzels with mustard on stale buns. She passed on the saurkraut. Smart girl…

The usual advice my mother pressed upon me that I "always know when the party's over…" doesn't apply here. Cleo stayed till the ugly end - drunk administrative assistants leaning on the arms of their co-workers drifted out to their cars leaving Cleo wondering who was going to drive her home. One nice lady noticed her frantic ankle-level pleas and hoisted her into the back seat of her sedan. Once at her house - which, I should mention, is a whole lot nicer than mine - Cleo got a late night bath, some more food, and a fluffy towel bed in the kitchen. For four days, the nice lady and her husband checked the newspaper classifieds for an ad from her owner, and talked about taking her to the pound. That idea was rejected by the nice lady, who had secretly fallen in love with Cleo and wanted to keep her. Cleo seemed to feel exactly the same way, having received a very nice pink scarf to wear around her neck, open access to the couple's backyard pool, and juicy bowls of dry dog chow mixed with canned.

Meanwhile, my neighbor pasted a hundred xeroxed photos of Cleo around the neighborhood, checked the pound every hour on the hour, and finally decided to put a desperate plea in the newspaper which came out on Tuesday. That morning, the nice lady and her husband had a quick breakfast and left late for work. They barely kissed each other goodbye on the way out the door - the nice lady miffed about the spat she'd just had with her husband. Tired of her constant requests to keep Cleo, the husband gave his wife 48 hours to find a new home for Cleo. She threw the newspaper she hadn't had time to read into the recycling bin next to the kitchen garbage. Before she turned to go, though, she hugged Cleo goodbye and looked into her almond-colored eyes. She got two licks in return that smeared her lipstick.

That evening after work, she quickly cleaned up the garbage Cleo had strewn all over the kitchen floor before her husband came home and gave Cleo that look humans put on. Cleo dropped her ears and headed out to lounge at the pool. The overturned recycling bin was surrounded by licked, tooth-marked dog food cans, and newspapers. The nice lady spotted the classifieds and brought it to the kitchen table.

HELP ME! I've lost my neighbor's dog, and she's going to kill me when she gets back. Cleo is a female Australian Shepherd mix and loves to go for a ride. Did she come home with you? Call me on my cell: xxx-xxxx.

She called the number, gave directions to her tony, West Austin home in the hills. When my neighbor arrived, Cleo was sitting quietly at the nice lady's ankles on the front porch, her pink scarf set off at an angle over her left shoulder. She greeted my neighbor, then while the humans talked, she sidled off to the backyard for one last swim. Wet, dripping in the kitchen, she took one last bite of forbidden canned dog food and came to rest at the nice lady's ankles again. One last lipstick kiss, and Cleo ran down and jumped into my neighbor's car for another ride.