We like to go to our next-door guest house, the Brown Palace, and put together jigsaw puzzles when nobody's staying there. This keeps the cat from getting into the puzzle pieces, and it's nice to spend some time in a house that's all cleaned up and no chores beckoning.

Last summer we put together a puzzle that was different wild birds. I was vacuuming about a month ago and under one of the throw rugs was a piece from that puzzle. Now, my mind isn't very nimble when I'm vacuuming, but I thought I picked up that puzzle piece before I sucked it up and put it in my pocket with some other small trash.

And then I tossed the handful of small trash out of my pocket into the big trash. So Mr. Troutbend and I went through that trash - coffee grounds and all - looking for that puzzle piece and didn't find it.

So a couple of weeks ago I was once again vacuuming, pulled up the rug, saw the puzzle piece (where I now remembered I had left it that first time thinking I would go get it when done vacuuming), but before I could react, it was sucked up into the sweeper.

I was so disgusted with myself I decided I didn't care, and that puzzle could be short a piece. But yesterday a departing guest said they put that particular puzzle together, and it was missing two pieces. Well, I know where one of them is, it's in that vacuum bag, and I feel guilty for losing it.

One of these days I might remember to open it up and look for that puzzle piece. It will be like those researchers who look in the stomachs of dead fish to see what they eat.

Here is Buddy the Cat with a puzzle we put together at home. He claimed it as his own.