The Case of the Wandering Email

I made a rather unpleasant discovery yesterday, thanks to this guy:

His name is Angel (a name that has nothing to do with his temperament, by the way; he once had a sibling named Buffy...) and he has a bad habit of sprawling all over my papers when I'm sitting on the sofa and trying to write. Well, yesterday, he was sleeping on the outline for Who Buries the Dead, the tenth Sebastian St. Cyr book. Not wanting to disturb him, I decided simply to email myself the outline and consult it on my iPad. So I did. Only, it never arrived.

Since Angel ambled off soon afterwards to stick his face in his food bowl, I didn't think too much about it until Steve came home and said, "Why did you send me your outline?"

I went, "Huh?"

He said, "I thought maybe something's wrong with your printer, so I ran it off for you."

Assuming I must have sent it to him by mistake, I went to my computer and looked. But no; I had indeed sent the outline to myself, and myself alone.

"Here's the weird thing," said Steve. "Right after I printed it, it disappeared out of my inbox. I didn't delete it; it just went away."

About this time, my computer chimed at me, and there was the outline in my inbox where it should have been two hours before. There was nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, to indicate that it had been on an unauthorized detour.

Now, I don't know about you, but this has thoroughly spooked me. Because I sometimes include information in my emails that I really, really wouldn't want other people on my email contacts list to read.

Have you ever had a similar experience? Any ideas as to how one can prevent this from happening? It isn't exactly as if we can quit using email or even avoid saying things that are intended only for the eyes of the recipient.