I mislaid my cat yesterday

[TrogL]

We just moved to a new place. Smokey is NOT an outdoor kitty. She was raised in a 5th floor apartment and the closest she got to outdoors was out on the balcony. Regardless, we did lose a cat from that apartment - it either jumped off the balcony or got out the door, out the fire door, out the inner downstairs door and out the outer downstairs door (unlikely) so I've been paranoid about cats near doors.

Yesterday when I left, the cat was in the kitchen. When I got home, no sign of the cat. Anywhere. We searched the house - repeatedly. Closets. Under things. No cat. Anywhere.

I figure she'd gotten out and was lost and I was all upset.

When I got home she was there as usual.

Last night I heard this unholy ruckus in the bedroom and got up to find what the fuss was about - and found her hiding place.

We just moved to a new place - remember. What she did was to stand on top of a partially unpacked box. Her weight would cause one side of the top of the box to sag enough so that she could crawl through the crack and get inside the box. The box would then re-close itself with her inside and be totally invisible from the outside. The ruckus was her trying to pull the lid back down so she could get out.

[jeff30997]

1. Hehe...

Clever.

[demnan]

2. My Lily is good at hiding

She goes to the very back of the closet, so you can't see her and gets into or under something there.

[Patiod]

3. I locked the cat out last night

Went into the bathroom to run a bath, and closed the open window. Ten minutes later, as I prepared to get into the tub, I had a creepy feeling I was being watched.

There in the window was a little cat face sort of floating in the dark outside the window - she had slipped out onto the deck while the window was open, and was none too pleased to have her only way back in barred.

Glad you found the cat after the move - that has to have been scary.

[skygazer]

4. How funny and cute

We had a cat once who had a litter of kittens under my bed. She got nervous eventually because we kept peeking under there so she moved them - where, we didn't know.

Then one afternoon, I was sitting in my room and in came the cat, looking very harassed, with a kitten in her mouth. She put it under the bed and went and got another, then another, until there were four kittens under the bed. Except she'd had five.

She kept pacing around so we followed her to my brother's closet where she squeezed up through a hole in the roof under the eaves where she meowed and meowed then came back with no kitten.

Eventually, we figured out that the lost kitten had crawled to the edge of the eaves and fallen down into the wall! This was a two story house. Luckily, we heard the poor thing crying in the wall in my brother's room and we ripped a hole in the wall and rescued him - he'd gotten caught in the insulation and was just kind of hanging there.

The kitten was fine, the wall got fixed and the cats never went up in the eaves again! They do find some interesting places, don't they?

[ET Awful]

5. Quinn has done that.

He's also been found sleeping peacefully in a closed closet without making a sound. That tought me to make sure both him and Althea are out in the open and visible before I leave the apt. :)

[Hell Hath No Fury]

6. The same thing happened to a friend of mine...

She moved with her two shy cats, Hazel and Mr. B, into a new apartment. The place was a one bedroom, not all that big -- in other words, not many places to hide.

So the first morning after the move-in my friend can't find her cats. She figures they're just hiding out, no big deal, they'll pop up.

Two weeks later and she still can't find her cats!

She knows they are there because the food/water/poop box are being used, but try as she might, she cannot find their hiding place.

She finally discovers they had been hiding themselves in a kitchen cabinet - behind a drawer - in a hole - under the floorboards.

They eventually did relax and made themselves at home. :)

[pagerbear]

7. Oh dear--think of the copy-cat pussibilities!

[NV Whino]

8. I adopted a rather skittish 1-year-old once

He got used to me quickly, but strangers freaked him out. I was housesitting for a well-known celebrity when I adopted him. (She was a cat person, too and invited me to bring my cat.) When she arrived back from her film shoot, complete with Playboy limo and multiple trunks and lots of commotion, I couldn't find the cat. Then while helping her unpack, I noticed a rather large lump under the covers on her bed. 'nuf said.

[City of Mills]

9. My wife caught a feral cat

About two years ago, with a Hav-a-heart trap. She was new to the whole cat-trapping business, and well - she made a pretty bad mistake. Feeling bad about containing the animal in such a small trap, she let the cat out in our bathroom.

So now, there's a very scared, feral cat desperately looking for a way out of this strange place - it jumps into the tub and hides behind the curtain. Wife can't coax the cat back into the trap so she calls me. 1/2 hour later, the bathroom is TRASHED - the shower curtain is pulled down, shampoo bottles everywhere, everything not bolted to the ceiling or wall is now in a big pile on the floor. I managed to trap the cat, after sustaining many deep cuts and scratches. Moral of the story? When you trap a wild cat, DO NOT LET IT OUT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!

But I digress - We ended up keeping this small black cat, which we named Gypsy. It took her quite awhile to get used to people. She spent the first few months darting from hiding place to hiding place. One day, we couldn't find her anywhere. We searched the house top to bottom, but this cat was nowhere to be found. It was very frustrating, as neither of us could think of how the cat could've got out. Then we noticed a scratching noise in the bathroom. After awhile, I finally figured out what she was up to. She had let herself into the under-sink area in my kitchen. Right about the area where my hot/cold spigots enter the apartment, there was a small gap in the wall. She had crawled through the gap to the other side of the wall, which is where the plumbing for the bathroom is. She had actually crawled inside of the tub, in the space between the tub's outer surface and the tub's inner surface. It took a day of coaxing to get her out of that area, and you better believe I sealed that gap immediately!

We still have Gypsy, and to this day, my wife and I are the only humans who have seen this cat. She only comes out if we're the only ones home. But she is a sweetheart!