Just thirty minutes or so ago [from when I started writing this, that is], I went to check if my cat had had enough of the cold outside yet, and find a stray dog on my porch. Out of reflex, I throw open the door and start to yell gibberish at it, and it retreats a ten meters or so out in the yard. I start to follow it, but luckily I remembered I wasn't wearing anything except socks before I hit the snow. While I fetch my boots and a coat, the dog disappears. My kitteh, however, was still missing.
I set out to look for her, of course. After about ten minutes, I hear a lonely, terrified Mjeeeoooow answer my calls. She was sitting far up in an oak, just outside the garden-edge hedge. There were no dog-tracks around there, thankfully. My guess is, she ran to the porch when the dog started chasing her, she ran to the porch, only to find the kitchen door closed. She then dodged in under some of the furniture standing there and snuck "out the back" without the dog noticing where she had went, and then she must have fled up in the tree.
Anyways, the reason I'm posting this here instead of the sad thread is that she's back inside in the warmth now. It took some time to get here inside, though. At first, she didn't want to come down, understandably, but when I finally coaxed her to the ground she refused to come with me. I went inside to fetch the wood "basket" (because for some reason, she loves to be carried in it, and will abandon all other undertakings if there's just a wee potential that somebody is going out to get fire wood), but the noise from when I opened to door again scared her up in another tree - a conifer tree this time. I then had to stand there for another five minutes waiting for her to come down again, upon when she finally got into the basket and we could go inside. Now she's purring in my lap again, and without any obvious wounds as well
The post ended up a little more long-winded than I had intended, though.