Abby: The Reverse Houdini
Well, she did it to me again. Last year, my smallest cat, Abby, a little demon if ever there was one, broke into my AC duct, ripping out slats from the grill in one to get in there, and pushing out the grill of two others in an apparent attempt to get out, only she must have decided it was too far to jump. I finally rescued her when I tracked her plaintive cries to the overhang at the front of my house, and then ripped the screen off to reach her. Naturally, it all had to be fixed.
But that’s Abby. She is the opposite of an escape artist, able to break into any forbidden location, and totally clueless when it comes to escaping out of it. I am constantly having to maneuver her out of filing cabinets that she has no business getting into, and hauling stuff out of the vanity so she can get out of a tight fit that she had no trouble getting into. But as to the AC duct, I thought that at least was safe. There was only one place where she could get to it, just near the china cabinet, and I had blocked it with a large unsightly cardboard box that went up to the ceiling.
And then today, on a workday when I am supposed to be concentrating on earning the money to buy cat food, there were two harbingers of disasters: cries for help coming from the ceiling, and her siblings, Aaron and Jess, running into the den all excited because the brat got herself in trouble again. Yes, somehow Abby had found the strength to shove the box enough to the side to let her get to the grate; the rest was so predictable.
It was not an easy fix. I could not entice her to the same vent where I rescued her before, probably because he remember how she was ignominiously dragged out of it the last time. The place she broke into seemed a natural, except that the metal inside was very sharp. Having cut myself while groping around in search of black fur, I couldn’t risk dragging her across it even he she did get close enough for me to try. In the meantime, I’m supposed to be working, and that’s what I ended up doing. I shut off the AC–and this is Florida–so the noise and artificial wind wouldn’t scare her, and just let her stew in the hopes that she would figure it out herself.
She didn’t, but towards the end of a hot and stuffy day, the meows came from a new location, a grate with a large enough space behind it to make it likely that I could actually get in there and grab her. Unscrewing didn’t work, so I had to literally rip the grill off the vent, but it worked. I soon got my claws on her and brought her to safely. The AC is back on, the cardboard box is back in place with a lot of stuff inside to weight it down, and I will be paying a handyman on Sunday to replace the grills, and then cover them with chicken wire so she can never get in there again.
Though with Abby, who knows?
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BTW, Abby is named after Abby Taylor/Folsom from my book, In the Midst of Death…. Abby was a born trouble-maker, who broke the law, the hearts of two men, and her vows to one of them. As I look at the rubble left from the day’s adventure, I think, “Yeah, she hasn’t changed.”