If you’re curious, you’ll probably be a good journalist because we follow our curiosity like cats.
~Diane Sawyer
His glowing eyes gave him away. I spotted him hiding under our porch — a tiny thing with scaly, bald patches where there should have been black fur. So I did the only rational thing — I grabbed an empty box, laid my trap, and scooped him up. Bringing him inside, I wondered how I’d explain this to my husband. We are both very allergic to cats, so convincing him to let me help this tiny kitten would take all of my persuasive powers.
Opening the box in the light of my kitchen, I discovered the situation was worse than I had thought. He was malnourished and missing large amounts of fur all over his shaking body. I could feel his tiny bones and his swollen belly. I determined he couldn’t be more than four weeks old — so young to have suffered so much already.
Luckily for me, my husband is as much of a sap as I am. So, we loaded up on allergy medicine and settled in to nourish our rescued kitten back to health. Most of his ailments were cured with lots of food and attention. The bald patches were easy enough to fix after a trip to the vet.
Before we knew it, he was running around the house at full speed and causing all sorts of mischief. He liked to hide in the most random places and wait for us to pass by. Once we were close enough, he would pounce out on our feet, scare the daylights out of us, and bound off before the screams were fully out of our mouths. For some reason, he only played this game when we had been home for hours. If we left the house, he would come running to the door to greet us when we returned.
So, imagine my surprise when we came home from the gym, and there wasn’t a cat winding his way around our feet. It seemed very odd, but I wasn’t too worried at first. I called his name, expecting him to come running, but he didn’t appear. My husband and I checked his usual spots, but he was nowhere to be found. So we checked again. And again. We grew more frantic as time passed. After an hour of calling his name and checking every room, we grew worried that he had somehow escaped. But a quick check of the windows and doors proved they were all locked and secured. After another hour, I became convinced that some criminal had literally “cat-burgled” us. I just knew that someone had broken in, seen how awesome our cat was, and stolen him!
I tried to remember what people do when a cat goes missing. Did they put up signs? Offer a reward? I had never had a missing pet, and I felt as lost as I thought he was. My husband figured we had done everything we could for the night, so he set out dinner and tossed a load of laundry in the washing machine. As soon as the washing machine hit the spin cycle, we heard it: a loud, wailing meoooooow!
Jumping up, we ran to the washing machine, opening the lid to find nothing but wet, sudsy laundry. We stared at each other, trying to determine where the sound had come from, when we heard it again. Meoooooow.
It had definitely come from the washing machine, but it was clear he wasn’t inside the machine. So where was he? I looked on the sides and between the washer and dryer, but there was no sign of him. Climbing on top of the washing machine, I peeked over the back.
Again, his glowing eyes gave him away. He was upside-down with his arms and legs spread as far as they could go, stuck between the wall and the washing machine. His eyes were open incredibly wide with a look of pure panic, and he let out another screeching meoooooow. I reached down and rescued him from his precarious position, laughing with relief. Later, we determined he had climbed on top of the washing machine, slipped and fell behind it, and then somehow grabbed onto the small vents in the back of the machine on his way down.
Needless to say, that was the very last day he climbed on anything again. All of his surprise attacks now come from much closer to the ground!
~Jessica Edwards
