The Adventure of the Missing Kitty
Feb. 24th, 2003 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamajoanDisclaimer: this story has a happy ending. Just thought I'd make that clear from the start, because we were having some *very* unpleasant imaginings. :(
I went to my mom's yesterday, as I do almost every Sunday. I arrived around 2:30. Her kitty Nomar didn't come to greet me, but that's not so unusual -- especially since the door to the basement was open. Mom lets her kitties in the basement every now and then as a special treat.
Well, an hour or so went by and I started to get a bit worried. Nomar doesn't usually stay in the basement that long, and the other kitty, Mr. Softie, who's usually more interested in the basement, was in the apartment acting weird -- all clingy and anxious, more so than usual. I told mom I was worried about Nomar, but she was all, "eh, he'll come up when he's ready." I took a quick spin through the basement, but let's face it, a basement has a million places where a cat could hide -- especially a black cat! So I didn't see him, but that didn't seem terribly weird.
But then a few more hours went by and still no sign of him, and then even mom started to get a little nervous. We were watching golf on TV -- um, I mean, mom was watching golf and I was making fun of her, yeah, that's it ;) -- but at every commercial we were going down to check for Nomar and not finding him.
Finally around 7pm, at least four hours after he had gone missing, we went down again and heard faint meowing. We tracked its source to one of the furnaces and my mom freaked out, thinking Nomar had gotten in the furnace somehow. But we soon realized that in fact the meowing was coming from above! He was stuck in the space between the ceiling and the floorboards above. How he got up there we still aren't sure, but he was sticking his nose through a small hole above the furnace and meowing pitifully.
Well, I got up on a chair and with some sawing and hammering was able to widen the hole until it was big enough to fit a kitty through (meanwhile showering plaster and sawdust and random dirt down on my face, whee). But this process freaked Nomar out and he disappeared out of sight and stopped meowing, even when we called and called. :( We thought we heard him meowing back but it turned out to be Mr. Softie, hanging around by our feet and expressing his own distress.
Eventually we decided that the sawing and banging had scared Nomar and we should just leave a little bit of a food and go away and hope he would come out when it was quiet. So we did that, and when we came back a little while later we found him still in the original hole -- when I got up on a ladder and stuck my head almost into the hole in the ceiling, I could just barely see the tops of his ears. He was so scared he wouldn't even meow, let alone come to me when I called him. :(
Then mom decided she wanted to call our friend Brian, who is our general handyman and carpenter and engineering-problem-solver guy. So we called him and he came over and looked, and said that short of drastic measures like drilling a huge hole in the ceiling, his advice was to put up a platform and then go away. The hole we had made, remember, was right above the furnace, so there were a lot of pipes there. We were able to balance a piece of wood on the pipes so that when Nomar looked out of his hole, instead of seeing a long scary drop to the floor, he would see a nice conveniently-placed platform to jump onto, and then the top of the ladder, and then he could get to the floor.
So we did that, and we put some food inside the hole in the ceiling to coax him over to it, and then we went back upstairs hoping that once it was quiet again he would calm down enough to investigate.
Two hours later, at 11:30pm, as we were watching the evening news and fretting, he came walking into the living room! He was TOTALLY covered with dirt -- it was disgusting, but in a funny way. :) He was absolutely gray from it; he looked like a completely different cat. When I picked him up and cuddled him, my shirt and pants and hands got TOTALLY black. Then mom went downstairs to retrieve the ladder, and Nomar made a beeline for his food dish.
At first he was freaked out and wouldn't come near us, but eventually, after eating and drinking a little, he calmed down and we sat on the livingroom floor and he came over to be petted. We were petting him and laughing at how completely black our hands were turning. And we tried rubbing him with a towel but it wasn't doing any good. Finally mom was like, "I guess I'll be washing my sheets tomorrow." 'Cause, you know, no way was she gonna tell Nomie that he couldn't sleep with her that night!
I ended up sleeping at mom's place since by the time Nomar had been retrieved and properly loved it was past midnight. This morning, he was still leaving a thick coating of grime on our hands when we petted him, *groan*! But he did seem calmer, and desperate for snuggles. Mom was wiping him with a damp towel, which of course he didn't much care for, but it was slowly working. Luckily mom doesn't work on Mondays so she has all day to recover and help Nomar recover and get him cleaned up.
We were just *so* relieved that he came out before we had to go to bed, because we would have had such trouble sleeping. Mr. Softie also seemed greatly relieved -- poor little guy, he didn't know what the hell was going on! And I know two kitties who won't be allowed in the basement again for a VERY long time, if ever. ;)
Ah, the joys of being owned by cats. Sigh. Well, it was an adventure, that's for sure. And all's well that ends well.
I went to my mom's yesterday, as I do almost every Sunday. I arrived around 2:30. Her kitty Nomar didn't come to greet me, but that's not so unusual -- especially since the door to the basement was open. Mom lets her kitties in the basement every now and then as a special treat.
Well, an hour or so went by and I started to get a bit worried. Nomar doesn't usually stay in the basement that long, and the other kitty, Mr. Softie, who's usually more interested in the basement, was in the apartment acting weird -- all clingy and anxious, more so than usual. I told mom I was worried about Nomar, but she was all, "eh, he'll come up when he's ready." I took a quick spin through the basement, but let's face it, a basement has a million places where a cat could hide -- especially a black cat! So I didn't see him, but that didn't seem terribly weird.
But then a few more hours went by and still no sign of him, and then even mom started to get a little nervous. We were watching golf on TV -- um, I mean, mom was watching golf and I was making fun of her, yeah, that's it ;) -- but at every commercial we were going down to check for Nomar and not finding him.
Finally around 7pm, at least four hours after he had gone missing, we went down again and heard faint meowing. We tracked its source to one of the furnaces and my mom freaked out, thinking Nomar had gotten in the furnace somehow. But we soon realized that in fact the meowing was coming from above! He was stuck in the space between the ceiling and the floorboards above. How he got up there we still aren't sure, but he was sticking his nose through a small hole above the furnace and meowing pitifully.
Well, I got up on a chair and with some sawing and hammering was able to widen the hole until it was big enough to fit a kitty through (meanwhile showering plaster and sawdust and random dirt down on my face, whee). But this process freaked Nomar out and he disappeared out of sight and stopped meowing, even when we called and called. :( We thought we heard him meowing back but it turned out to be Mr. Softie, hanging around by our feet and expressing his own distress.
Eventually we decided that the sawing and banging had scared Nomar and we should just leave a little bit of a food and go away and hope he would come out when it was quiet. So we did that, and when we came back a little while later we found him still in the original hole -- when I got up on a ladder and stuck my head almost into the hole in the ceiling, I could just barely see the tops of his ears. He was so scared he wouldn't even meow, let alone come to me when I called him. :(
Then mom decided she wanted to call our friend Brian, who is our general handyman and carpenter and engineering-problem-solver guy. So we called him and he came over and looked, and said that short of drastic measures like drilling a huge hole in the ceiling, his advice was to put up a platform and then go away. The hole we had made, remember, was right above the furnace, so there were a lot of pipes there. We were able to balance a piece of wood on the pipes so that when Nomar looked out of his hole, instead of seeing a long scary drop to the floor, he would see a nice conveniently-placed platform to jump onto, and then the top of the ladder, and then he could get to the floor.
So we did that, and we put some food inside the hole in the ceiling to coax him over to it, and then we went back upstairs hoping that once it was quiet again he would calm down enough to investigate.
Two hours later, at 11:30pm, as we were watching the evening news and fretting, he came walking into the living room! He was TOTALLY covered with dirt -- it was disgusting, but in a funny way. :) He was absolutely gray from it; he looked like a completely different cat. When I picked him up and cuddled him, my shirt and pants and hands got TOTALLY black. Then mom went downstairs to retrieve the ladder, and Nomar made a beeline for his food dish.
At first he was freaked out and wouldn't come near us, but eventually, after eating and drinking a little, he calmed down and we sat on the livingroom floor and he came over to be petted. We were petting him and laughing at how completely black our hands were turning. And we tried rubbing him with a towel but it wasn't doing any good. Finally mom was like, "I guess I'll be washing my sheets tomorrow." 'Cause, you know, no way was she gonna tell Nomie that he couldn't sleep with her that night!
I ended up sleeping at mom's place since by the time Nomar had been retrieved and properly loved it was past midnight. This morning, he was still leaving a thick coating of grime on our hands when we petted him, *groan*! But he did seem calmer, and desperate for snuggles. Mom was wiping him with a damp towel, which of course he didn't much care for, but it was slowly working. Luckily mom doesn't work on Mondays so she has all day to recover and help Nomar recover and get him cleaned up.
We were just *so* relieved that he came out before we had to go to bed, because we would have had such trouble sleeping. Mr. Softie also seemed greatly relieved -- poor little guy, he didn't know what the hell was going on! And I know two kitties who won't be allowed in the basement again for a VERY long time, if ever. ;)
Ah, the joys of being owned by cats. Sigh. Well, it was an adventure, that's for sure. And all's well that ends well.
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