A Cat Story

Every day I'm convinced God has something up His sleeve to keep us laughing.   "She laughs at the days to come...."  Proverbs 31:25 is what my good friend and I have discussed many times.  We want to be women who laugh at life instead of being fearful and dreading the future!  So, praying that together, God decided He would help me by bringing humourous situations into my life....

We should have a reality show featuring our cats.  We have 2 sister cats who live indoors but hate each other with an intensity that is scary sometimes.  They fight, uh, like cats.  The one dominant cat scares the other cat into tiny places where she can hide.  One of the places she likes to hide is in a vent high above our stairs that she has to jump to in order to get away from her sister.  The problem is it leads to duct work down in the basement and if she ever were to slip.....In this episode.......I'll call it "The Night of the Duct Rescue"......(play scary music....)

A few weeks ago, she fell down the duct work.  However, who knows how, she found her way out, and showed up upstairs shortly afterward, but last night was different.

She slipped again, due to her scary sister threatening her.  She fell straight down the duct work, landing at the bottom, in the ceiling of the basement.  We could hear her scraping and meowing, but she couldn't get out.  We tried to entice her just as we had the last time, but she wasn't making her way out.

It was a late night for my husband, teaching at the college after a long day at work.  I tried everything to get the cat out before he got home, even taking dry wall off the wall, so he wouldn't have to deal with it, but she was stuck in there.  So as much as I dreaded to tell him, I had to.  He had a few choice words about cats, let's say, when he found out.

Down he went taking the duct work apart.  He wasn't happy about that!  On top of it all, he couldn't find his hammer because all the kids use them and don't return them.  Ewww...another thing that made him a little grumpy....kept getting worse!

Finally he got all the duct work off, but no cat.  Oh dear.  Was she stuck in an awkward position? Would she die in our vents?  My kids were upset.  Well, some of them.  Others were having a party upstairs completely oblivious to our cat turmoil!  Heartless!

Finally he went into the dungeon part of our house where there is a dirt floor.  He found out we have a kitty litter down there that we had no idea was so extensive.  How disgusting.  Now we weren't sure we wanted to save the cat.

In the dungeon side he saw the back of the duct work and that there was a little lever to open a damper.  He twisted it and the next thing you know there's a little black fuzzy face looking at me and smelling the can of tuna I had opened to entice her out.  She was in a total panic and barely let me grab her, but I got her out to the happiness of everyone, except, maybe for Daddy.

We decided he was the best dad ever though.  Saving a cat has to be one of the funniest things in the big picture of life as they really have very little purpose for living.  They hardly mouse around here.  They fight and make awful messes.  They break things.  They eat without any gratitude.  They EXPECT you to take care of them, borderline demand.  And yet there we all were, hugging her, petting her, so happy to see her.  Hilarious.

When it was all said and done, even my husband said (the one who hates cats), "Does she want some tuna?  If not, I'll eat it."  Good to see he has his priorities in order.