Like you, I enjoy going out of town. Doing something different. Shaking things up.

Then it happens. While strolling the city, walking the beach, visiting the museum, a little voice wells up within me: Shouldn’t you be going home now?

Whatever I’m doing suddenly feels a whole lot less fun. My focus shifts. It’s time to find my car and beat a retreat to Napa.

I have a homing instinct that won’t quit.

I’m like a prairie dog. You don’t see prairie dogs packing a bag and heading off for the weekend, leaving a note on the kitchen table: “Gone exploring.”

Nope. Prairie dogs venture here and there, but always within eyeshot of their burrow. When the urge strikes — and it does quite often —  they drop what they’re doing and scurry in.

Prairie dogs, of course, have coyotes and birds of prey to worry about. What’s my excuse?

It’s not like I was orphaned as a child, my home pulled out from under me, creating separation anxieties that would last a lifetime.

OK, my parents did divorce. When I was at a relatively tender age, at that. But I never lost my home.

OK, I did lose my home. Mom, my siblings and I wandered like refugees for several years. But that was a lifetime ago.

Earlier this month I visited my daughter, now back in Sacramento, for a father-daughter day of recreation. The agenda was a loose one. Some bicycling, a coffee house or two, maybe dinner and a movie.

We were half-way through this ambitious agenda, having biked part of the American River trail, then stopped at the Naked Lounge, when the little voice piped up.

“Time to wrap things up,” the voice said. “If you leave now you can be home for dinner.”

Home. Dinner. Those were magic words. I almost bolted.

But there was Jenny, serenely sipping her mocha thingie as she reviewed movies that I might find worth watching. She was in the moment. She wasn’t expecting her dad to abruptly desert her.

Yet I knew I could finesse it. Hadn’t I done so many times before? Well, Jen, I could say. I’d better hit the road. If I act now, I can beat rush hour.

No one argues when you throw rush hour at them.

Shame came over me. I’d driven all this way to be with my daughter and now I’m skipping out? Like a deadbeat dad. All because of a compulsion that hardly speaks its name?

I tried ignoring my inner voice. I focused as hard as I could on Jenny and my cappuccino. I returned to the conversation. Woody Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream” doesn’t stack up to “Match Point,” I said.

Crisis averted. Brain under control.

Only the voice returned. Louder. More insistent. Home! Now!

I’d capitulated to the voice on two previous Jenny visits, cutting short our time together. I had reacted as if Cheryl, back in Napa, would perish if I delayed a moment longer. As if Jenny were chopped liver.

The thought that I would capitulate again depressed me. Can’t I rule my emotions? Can’t I do the decent, fatherly thing, the only thing that makes sense, and stay a while?

Stay or go. Honor or shame. Man or prairie dog.

I grabbed a copy of Sacramento’s alternative weekly. Let’s see what’s playing, I said.

“Man on Wire” was a fine documentary about the Frenchman who in the early 1970s  strung a rope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center ... then walked it.

After the movie, we biked to an Italian restaurant in happening Mid-town. The evening was Sacramento Valley balmy. People strolled, restaurants bustled. We dined on the sidewalk, taking it all in.

There’s always lots to talk about with Jen. Family matters. Her life in the city. French high-wire walkers.

I was so thankful I’d wrestled my inner prairie dog into submission and stayed.

The ride home on 80 was clear sailing. I played a Wilco album — a Jenny gift — on the stereo.

I tiptoed into a dark house at 10:30. As I entered the bedroom, Cheryl stirred. She’d been waiting for me. How was your Jenny visit? she said.

The best, I said.

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or Napa Valley Register,  P.O. Box 150, Napa 94559 or kcourtney@napanews.com