The new cat went missing on Wednesday. She had done exactly what I had told her not to do: messed with Girlie.
Girlie don't play that shit.
Girlie is the Queen of the Castle.
And Girlie got her in her cross-hairs, and it was Game Over for the little one. We awoke Wednesday morning to caterwauling and fur flying. I spanked Girlie, loved the little one, and calmed her down, leaving her high on a table when I went to work.
And that was the last we saw of her.
At first we thought she was just back under the bed hiding. But nope, she was not. We figured wherever she was, she'd come out sooner rather than later. By Thursday evening, I'm starting to get worried, because we haven't seen hide nor hair.
I pestered My Mister until he started searching around for her with me. He had kept assuring me she'd come out eventually, but I wasn't sure she hadn't had a heart attack from fear and we'd find her by the eventual stink.
We turned over every square inch of our house. We have a small house. It's 2 -bedrooms. We looked in every probable and improbable place. Kitchen cupboards. In the 1-inch of space between fridge and wall. Under every piece of furniture. Every nook & cranny, until it was determined that she just wasn't here. Houdini Cat.
And then, I panicked as I thought of the one place she could have possibly gotten that we hadn't checked. We have a vent, where the vent cover just rests against the wall, and some cables come out of it that run from somewhere into our house and operates Things. I don't really know, but I think it's running phone lines and television lines from the upstairs (our house) to the downstairs house, as we split stuff.
Thanks to Mr. Non-HandyMan, the cover just rests against the wall.
It was knocked over.
You see where I'm going with this? Is the cat stuffed between the floor/walls of our two houses?? Dear Garth, that would be a nightmare. We wouldn't be able to get her out. My little black one was helping me investigate, sticking her nose into the hole while we were meowing into it to see if we elicited a response, and checking into spaces too difficult to see with a little hand-held mirror.
Friday nights at my house are really Dream Date nights.
Eventually we decided to move our efforts to the basement. The door to our kitchen had been opened for a while, as Toby went exploring, but we didn't think the new cat would be so bold as to take a big leap out into the Great Unknown. We had half-heartedly checked the basement anyway between Wednesday & Friday, but it's really too difficult to tackle all the nooks & crannies down there, especially with all of Kenny's business shit down there. There's just too much stuff, despite the cleaning out we embarked on thanks to our summer flood.
We looked again down there. Calling and meowing and shining flashlights, as we had no other options, she clearly was not in the house.
And finally we heard something. A bump in the night. The faintest of faint "me-ows". Coming from what could have been the ceiling, or a vent in the ceiling, or the wall.
We narrowed down our search to a corner of the basement, which was piled high with stuff we store down there.
We shined the light everywhere. No little pair of eyes glowing back at us.
And then, I heard it again. Mew. She has a weird mew-er to begin with, kind of deep and raspy and hard to hear under the best circumstances.
We determined she was under the stairwell, which is of course where we have a ton of shit/boxes stored. Heavy stuff that we need one day, but not anytime soon. It was an obstacle course to get back there, and Kenny started just chucking heavy boxes all over the room, and then shit started falling and it was a disaster. But then he finally caught a glimpse of shining eyes.
In the farthest back corner underneath the stairs a cat could possible get. We're not sure if she got back there and got stuck, because it was a pretty tight squeeze, or if she was just that much of an asshole that she wasn't helping us on purpose. He cleared some space and she gained some footing and ran like a shot out of that hidey-hole.
Directly into the part of the basement that's my storage and laundry area. Which by the way is where we had the majority of flooded items and it's relatively cleaned up back there.
Still couldn't find her.
So we said, "Fuck this shit!" and left for drinks. Several drinks.
Checked again when we came home, after she'd had a chance to calm down. We were vewy-vewy quiet. I mewed a few times, kitty-style. But I tried to keep it sounding like Friendly Kitty instead of like a big mean bitchy Girlie kitty.
I heard a mew. She finally peeped her little head out from the 2 inches of space between the furnace and the floor. She is an exceptional hider, we would have never found her there.
She did a good job of dusting.
The cobwebs blend in with her fur, but she had a little veil on over her face. I was kind of scared to touch her as webs frighten me, but in the interest of the Greater Good (getting that cat located and hauled back into the house), I did it. And then we took a picture, because at that point we needed to find some humor in the situation.
She came upstairs and had a good meal and a lot of pets, and stayed on the bed with us for a good long while. She pooped in the litter box (I don't even want to think about where she pooped/peed from Wednesday-Friday, but I'm sure one day we'll discover it). And all was right in the world.
Until 6:00 a.m., when I heard more hissing & running around the house. I jumped out of bed but didn't see anything.
She's been under the spare bed since. I fed her there, she's been through a lot.
She may have to go back to her original mama, despite original mama's allergies. I can't have a distressed, picked-on cat who hides under the bed. That's no good life. For her or us.
Timmy (downstairs) said he'd try her out, he only has 1 cat and a dog. He's not sure the cat will like it, but he'll try her out on Sunday when he's home, see how she does.
If that doesn't work, she'll have to go back. We really like her, she's a good girl, and I wanted to help her allergic mama out, but it may not be a good solution.
The upside? She was NOT in the walls. Because that would have spelled D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.
