The Little Knittin' Kitten

Cat in a hot tin roof

Ever since the building inspector discovered aspestos in my attic there's been a string of contractors coming and going giving estimates to replace it with something safer. A contractor was finally decided on and set to come this morning, but when he arrived he was shocked to hear that they expected him to do a week long, highly toxic job with a young woman and three cats in the house (he also discovered previously unnoticed asbestos in the basement). This resulted in a number of back and forths in the only room with access to the attic and the door eventually being left open. This proved to be just too much temptation to a certain hide-and-seek loving pussy cat.

Nyron and I had had a lot planned this morning. We were going to pick up a second litterbox for the kittens (Spirit sometimes denies them access, the bitch), then visit my friend Amy and see her new baby. Then Nyron was going to go to work and Amy and I were going to spend some seriously necessary and long overdue girl-time. We never like to leave the house without knowing where all the cats are, thanks largely to their many disappearing acts, so we set about on the daily search. It's not terribly unusualy to find all the cats but Hyde, so we started going through all his usual favourite spots - under the armchair, the windowsill in the bathroom and inside the stove (I'm not even kidding).

When we went upstairs we noticed the door standing open, the attic closet open and a ladder pushed helpfully right inside, prividing a nice little set of kitty stairs right into the attic. It took us about three circles of all the hiding spots to finally admit that he must have gone up there. Nyron - like a trooper! - poked his head up the hole and into the hot, dusty, potentially lung-ruining attic and shined a feeble plastic flashlight around. The first time he didn't see anything, but a second attempt revealed the errant puss, huddled in a corner well far away from the opening. I can understand why; the new owner was using some very loud machinery today and it must have been very frightening.

Hyde was discovered in the attic at around 11:30. It wasn't until almost 9 tonight that he finally ventured down. Between that time we tried everything to coax him down. Nyron braved the attic 3 more times and I spent hours sitting just outside the door with the food bowl on the floor. I was initially worried that if I left the door open for Hyde to come down himself then the other cats would find the attic inticing and venture up there themselves, but I needn't have been concerned. The machinery also frightened our scaredy-cat Sebastian and he didn't come out from under the armchair until about an hour ago. Nerves of Steel Spirit made a few attempts to get into the room (likely only because I was trying to keep her out of it) and eventually decided to take no interest whatsoever in the attic and took up her usual post at the end of my bed. So after worrying about him for almost 12 hours Hyde eventually sauntered down like nothing at all, went into the kitchen and preceeded to drink half the water bowl in one sitting. Silly kitty.

=^_^=

posted @ 10:37 p.m.