Wednesday night, we went to Cafe Barada for the fundraiser that I helped organize for my sister Allison’s Pan Mass Challenge team. Cafe Barada kindly donated 5% of all of their proceeds for the day, plus an extra 5% from the bill of anyone who said they were there for the fundraiser. I was working downtown for the day, so Kristian picked Lilian up at daycare and we all met up at the restaurant. Pepper and Yogurt met us there, and we had a nice little dinner together.
Lilian was mostly a good sport (although the table of twenty-something girls next to us on the patio didn’t seem to think so). But, even the most well behaved almost-tw0-year-olds have their limits, and she reached hers just about the time when we’d normally be getting her ready for bed.
(Crazy coincidence, right?)
Kristian volunteered to take her home so that I could get a little extra time with our friends. They headed off and we continued our dinner. Everything was going great… until my phone rang.
Kristian: “So, uh Tabitha [our cat] is trapped somewhere in the house and I can’t get her out.”
Hope: “#$%!@#@!$!!”
We payed the bill quickly, and Yogurt agreed to come home with me and help us out.
(Because that’s what good friends do, right? They help you free small household pets from where said pets have somehow managed to trap themselves in your house.)
It took a lot of running around yelling “Tabitha! Tabitha!” and the three of us to triangulate where the angry meows were coming from… but we finally figured out that she was stuck between our first and second floors, running back and forth under the bathroom and Kristian’s office.
We’re still not entirely sure how she got down there (we thought she crawled under the bathtub when we pulled a side panel off to try and fix the damn thing again… but then she managed to get stuck again the next day when the panel was very much back in place). More importantly, we had no idea how to get her out.
Well, no idea how to get her out that wasn’t going to involve cutting large holes in places where large holes were not meant to go.
Eventually, Tabitha figured out that she could stick her head up through the hole in the floor of Kristian’s office where a steam pipe used to go…. Unfortunately, it was only her head that fit. So, she just stood there staring at us, crying, and desperately trying to wiggle her way through an opening that was never going to be open enough for her. It was sad, pathetic… and kinda comical. I mean, once you got past that whole “OMG my cat is trapped and we have no idea how to get her out” business.
I would show you a picture, but I was too busy scratching her behind the ears and telling her it was all going to be ok to take one. Let’s just say, I could have made a basement cat photochop of her and it just might have gone viral.
So, we had Proof of Life, but how were we going to get her out of there? The answer, apparently, was a circular saw and a crowbar. Did I wield these tools? No, I cowered in the other room and tried to think “don’t accidentally cut our cat in half” thoughts while my husband attacked a couple of floorboards with a vengeance.
(Did I mention that he just refinished those floors last year?)
(Pets are the reason we can’t have nice things.)
Tabitha ran to the other end of the sub-floor while the sawing and hacking was going on (she might have managed to get herself stuck between the floors, but she’s not a complete and total idiot). She had no interest in returning to the vicinity of all those scary noises, so we decided to let her come out on her own. Kristian gave Yogurt a ride home, and I passed out on the couch.
About a half hour later, I heard a nonchalant meow, and Tabitha jumped up onto the couch next to me. “What’s up,” her meow seemed to say, “did I miss anything?” It took me a moment to realize oh hey my cat is totally ok now. What can I say? It was late. I was just happy that she was ok.
She might be a bit of an asshole… but she’s our asshole.
