Oh no! A Cat!

Animals love me. They love to follow me around, jump on me, lick me, basically torment me in any way that they can. I know they mess with me and then get together in their secret animal groups and have big laughs about how they screwed with the human. The human who really doesn’t like them. The human who would rather live far apart from them. The human who is me.

One of my early memories is running away from cows that my great-grandmother kept amidst the laughter of my country relatives. These days, seeing videos about cows attacking bicyclist and even deer going berserk, makes me think I wasn’t so stupid being scared.

Of course, I don’t really like even the more “normal” cat and dog and rabbit pets.  Does that make me a bad person? I’ve really got good reasons, believe me, I do.

Long ago, during one of my early babysitting jobs, my two little charges told me I needed to let the dog out so it could pee.  I opened the door and let the dog out.  The girls’ owl eyes grew large as the dog bounded over the fence and disappeared.  They had neglected to inform me, it seemed, that the dog actually needed a leash on before it went outside.  Luckily, my mother was home, just two houses down the street.  She came and drove the oldest girl around the neighborhood until they found the dog and brought it back. While I did babysit there again, I always insisted the dog be put outside before I got there.

I also made the mistake of bunny-sitting for a friend one week.  The rabbit’s people gave me instructions to let the rabbit out for exercise every day.  I asked several times just to be sure.  No, the rabbit won’t jump over the fence. No, you don’t need to put a leash on it. Just let it out. It will explore the backyard for awhile and then you can put it back in its cage. I didn’t ask about the woodpile. I didn’t know I needed to.  I let that rabbit out of its cage and it bounced back behind that wood pile as fast as its bunny legs would carry it.  In the time before cell phones, I didn’t know what to do. I knew if I left, the rabbit would disappear forever. I knew if I stayed, I’d never be able to catch the stupid rabbit and return it to its cage. Luckily, my mother saved the day again. I’d been gone so long, she sent my brothers to find me. They got out the hose and flooded the rabbit out of its hiding spot. I’m not sorry to say that was the last exercise the bunny got that week. I never rabbit-sat again.

My daughter, of course, did not inherit my animal-hating gene.  She practically came out of the womb asking for a pet. I thought fish, and even a couple of water frogs, would be enough. But, her eleven-year-old self informs me that you can’t pet a fish or hug a frog. And, she’s got an ally in her father, who has secretly wanted a pet for awhile now.

So, this weekend, as part of my husband’s big birthday mid-life crisis (more about mid-life crisis in my next post), the two of them went out and brought home a cat. 

I begrudgingly agreed to live with a cat, but I certainly don’t want to have anything to do with the cat. It is their cat. The cat, of course, sensed this from the moment she walked in the door. I saw it in her eyes. I was doomed.

That first day, the cat spent a wonderful afternoon being shown around to the people who came over to celebrate the big birthday. She purred, sat docilely, seemed to enjoy petting and didn’t want to explore at all. I saw her wink a few times in my direction, although everyone else seemed oblivious to her devious nature.

That night, husband and child put her in the bathroom, along with food, water, toys, a litter box. Everything a cat should need.  They said good-night, happy with their choice of a wonderful new pet.

I got up early, as I usually do, and my now-old husband turned over and grumbled, “Check that the cat didn’t screw anything up.” I sighed, walked in the bathroom, looked around, and saw… no cat. The bathroom isn’t that big. There aren’t many places to hide. There was no cat.

I woke up my husband who grumbled some more about how blind I must be. He stumbled into the bathroom, looked around, and then shrieked, “Holy, crap. The cat’s gone into the ducts.”

The cat, indeed, had gone into the ducts. After prying off the board and grill over the air vent, the cat had disappeared. My daughter, woken from the noise, crept into the bathroom and asked, “Where is my cat?” Then her eyes filled with tears as she whispered, “I only had a cat for one day and it’s already gone.”

I imagined the worst - a dead cat up in the ductworks.  Probably somewhere way up high, hard to reach. Probably somewhere that involved cutting out the most drywall and making a huge mess. Something that would take weeks to fix once the horror of a dead cat had been removed.

Since we put in all the ducts ourselves – and I slapped duct seal on them for hours in below zero weather in a house with only walls and no heat one winter – we had pictures of all of them and knew where each one went. We spent the morning taking down air vents and peering into ducts, hoping to see a cat. No cat. We took a broom stick and pounded on the ones that are still exposed since we don’t have all the ceilings in place. Still no cat. My husband even took apart the furnace to make sure the cat hadn’t fallen down into it. Again, no cat.

We settled down around twilight, trying to decide the next step, which probably involved cutting a hole in a duct somewhere (but where?) to widen the search a little bit. I flipped on the TV to a random show and we all heard a loud bang. The sound continued even with the TV muted. The cat was up there after all – and very much alive.

My husband raced to one end of the ducts, exposed to the air. He placed a can of smelly cat fish underneath it and waited. My daughter ran to the bathroom, a wide smile on her face, and waited. After a few more moments, filled with thumps and bangs, a slightly dusty cat emerged. She took a drink, checked out the litter box and seemed completely at home. And, I swear, she winked at me.