Awarded For Neatness in the Face of Adversity
Accidentally locked The Little Girl in The Airlock the other night...
Almost every apartment I've lived in has had an "airlock" of some kind or another - i.e., there's always at least two doors between my living space and the outside world, thus, there's always at least one closed door between a kitty & escape...
In the airlock was a couple of garbage bags full of clothes & a few suitcases full of junk. We had separated this junk from the rest of the herd in order to ready it for donation, which is to say, we hadn't yet gotten around to piling it all in the vehicle and trucking it down to the Sally Ann Drop Off Box a mere five blocks away.
Usually I count heads and/or flush out the airlock before I shut the inner door. That night, though, I just gave a cursory glance 'round. And the next morning...
It didn't occur to me to think anything of it when she didn't show up for breakfast. Sometimes she tends to hide when the grey kitty {Our Idiot Son} gets rumbustious, which he often does at mealtimes.
The smell of kitty pee wafting from the airlock was what tipped me off that something might be wrong... I opened the door to investigate, and she zoomed out.
A pile of flyers & junk mail had been knocked over, and at first I'd assumed she'd peed in that; but none of it was even remotely damp, and the cat hair led me to believe that she'd bedded down in it instead. The welcome mat was out of place, and I thought she must have peed on that; but it wasn't damp either.
Then I noticed there were holes clawed into the tops of the garbage bags. And that's when I realized what a truly good and clever kitty she is.
She had jumped atop the garbage bags, clawed them open, relieved herself *inside* the bags, and clawed them shut again. And I do mean both bags. She had peed in one and pooped in the other.
Didn't think the bags of clothes were fit for donation after that. But we couldn't pitch them outside until the very last minute the morning of garbage day, for fear they might draw unwanted attention from the neighbourhood cats... so we just had to put up with it 'till then.
~ ~ ~
I'd've thought she'd 've been mildly traumatized after having to spend the night locked in a small room with nothing to keep her company but the smell of her own bodily wastes.
But she was as right as rain, and that's the way the cliché crumbles. After breakfast, she came right back and parked herself in front of the closed airlock as if she wanted to get back in again.
Well, of course, said Boyfriend, it's probably the first time she's spent an entire night unmolested by Our Idiot Son. Must have been the first good night's sleep she's had in years.
Posted by edgar at July 22, 2004 12:17 PM