Q in the stairs
Sunday, our cat escaped thru the back door into the backporch/addition thingy that leads up to the second floor apartment and the basement laundry room. There’s a space in the slipshod construction between a wall and the flooring, so Q jumped down the dark hole. She’s been trying to investigate regions beyond her apartment for some time now. And just that morning, a neighbor’s cat had leaped over my foot as I tried to block it from running into the kitchen as K and I were bringing in the groceries, so the addition of strange cat scent had probably giving Q some inspiration to make her escape.
There was no way she was going to get back up the way she went in, and besides ripping up the flooring to get to the foundation, I didn’t see how we could get Q out. K saw that the stairs to the basement didn’t have a the backs to them (or whatever you’d call that part of stairs you don’t step on), so we stuck a flashlight in there. The first thing I saw was a old cat carcass. Either another cat had crawled under there and couldn’t find its way out or Q had entered some weird accelerated decomposition. But I finally spotted her to the side of the stairs.
After trying food and petting as lures, I figured (by calculating her actual, non-long haired size) my only option was to pull her thru the stair case. Luckily it worked, and we just had to spend a little time brushing all the cobwebs and dead things she had accumulated in her fur. Maybe I should shave her.
Oh no! Poor kitty!!! And how aweful that you had to see a cat carcass while looking for her! I would have been ready to smash through the wall or stairs or whatever it took. I’m not always rationaly when an animal’s well-being is at stake.
Comment by k8 — November 1, 2006 @ 12:52 am
Ah! How horrible (and slightly disturbing)! One of my really close friends got a cat this year, I went with her to pick up the kitty (who’s name jumps between Wingsy/Duck/Midnight). My friend’s plan was to have all the cat stuff in her basement and when I went down there I knew that it was a bad idea. There were huge holes in walls and the ceiling and lots of mice traps… never a good sign. I told her but of course she didn’t listen. So two days after she gets the cat home, she leaves me a desperate message on my phone that went along the lines of “I haven’t seen Duck in a day and I can hear her meowing but don’t know where she is!” Of course the cat had climbed into the beams of the basement ceiling and was so scared that she refused to come out. After two more days during which the cat appeared to never come down (not even to eat!) she decided it was time to cut out the ceiling. So with a handy saw she cut out the ceiling right in front of where the cat had taken up residence and got her kitty down! If she would have only listened to me in the first place…..
Comment by Cecilia — November 1, 2006 @ 6:32 pm
I was afraid Q was stuck down there also and I would have had to saw through the flooring. I’m glad you friend got her cat out, though. I remember a story about a cat in NYC getting stuck in the brick wall of some old building for days. Really awful.
Comment by Rick — November 7, 2006 @ 1:55 pm