Cat stories

A few weeks back I came home very late... like 2am, after having worked most of the night in the studio prior to midterm presentations. When I got to the apartment building, and opened the door, there were several people inside attempting to get a cat out of the stairwell. The cat was having nothing to do with leaving, she was camped. The three Italians (our neighbor and a married couple who I think were visiting her) were shouting at each other (I can never figure out when they are actually having a *real* argument versus a polite conversation). They were afraid the cat was rabid... it certainly had sharp claws. I didn't think it was rabid but it had been acting pretty weird I guess, leaping up at our apartment door and of course being completely unwilling to leave. I tried to help but we finally all gave up, left the outside door open and went to bed.

Well, over the weekend I started hearing this mewing sound. I thought it was outside but came to realize that it was a cat trapped somewhere in the building. I opened the door next our apartment entrance in the stairwell and found an old furnace room with no lights, lots of dirt and clearly could hear the cat mewing in there somewhere. I used my bicycle headlamp to try to peer around but could not see anything. And the floor of the room dropped down into a pit from the door about 4 feet. It was a mess.

I looked in later and found the cat, same one as before in the hallway. She was up on a ledge to the side of the room, in an opening in the wall right next to the ceiling. There were holes back into the wall from there. And I soon suspected that it was a she and that there were kittens in there somewhere. That explained her behavior and refusal to leave before.

There was no way to get her to come down and out, I tried to put a board in that she could climb down on but that was about the extent of it.

Enter my roommates. Or one roommate in particular, Ian. He got in there with a ladder and up to the opening in the wall. Discovered that behind the wall was an opening that dropped down about 5 or 6 feet. The mom cat was long gone now, but there was one kitten stuck at the bottom of this well. And of course there was no way to reach it. Ian tried to get it out but finally gave up and came on in to studio.

At the end of studio, at 7:00, Ian and Mark headed off to attempt to rescue the cat again. They were planning to drop something down in that the cat could climb up. Apparently the cat is in pretty bad shape at this point. I decided to delay going home for dinner because this clearly isn't something I want to be more involved in. My other roommates Jeff and Chris are still here, although Chris takes off pretty quickly to get food. Jeff disappears a little later.

Chris returns at 9ish, completely ticked off. He'd been roped into helping as I feared. The landlady, who lives upstairs, had come down for a bit. The neighbor had come out. The landlady starts yelling at Chris for them to stop messing around in there (Basta! "Enough!") Of course all in Italian so Chris can't understand her but it appears to have to do with the piping in the room getting messed up. Ian and Mark wouldn't give up ("We've almost got it!"). Chris bales and comes back to studio.

Jeff returns at 9:30, totally pissed. They had been using his headlamp light (without having asked him) to look into the hole and had dropped it down there. So that's gone. But they had gotten the kitten out, it is on it's last legs and stinks. Angelica, the wife of the Italian prof who hosts us here and arranges the housing was there, so the landlady must have called to complain. They are attempting to feed the cat. Chris and Jeff head off after a bit, I don't know whether they went back to the apartment to attempt to deal with all of this or what.

Now at 10:30, Mark comes back in. Totally filthy. Says we have a new roommate kitten. I'm still working here in studio. But I can't hide here much longer because they'll shut the power off in another half hour. Plus I'm getting hungry.

Just I hope they didn't find my bike lamp and drop it down the hole as well!

I'm sure there will be a follow up post on this...

- B -