Continued (2)
So getting herself stuck behind the radiator hadn’t asphyxiated Misty after all. In fact she hadn’t even been behind the radiator. We’d found her and she was safe, and everyone was happy, especially a certain whistling plumber. The gap beneath the dishwasher was now completely blocked with cardboard and parcel tape, and she wouldn’t be able to get beneath the units again. The kitchen was also virtually free of any hiding place for a kitten to hide and all was well; so when I came down the next morning I fully expected to see Misty fast asleep in her cosy basket cuddled up to her fluffy yellow mouse with the bell inside.
I opened the kitchen door carefully and, closing it quietly behind me, went over to her basket. I looked inside…she wasn’t there! “No Misty! Don’t panic!” I told myself. “She’ll just be hiding in the kitchen somewhere”. I did a quick whiz around the kitchen; looking in all the likely hiding places. “DON’T PANIC!” I repeated, beginning to panic. “She had to be in here somewhere”. As headless as the chicken that most of us become in times of extreme stress, I dashed around looking behind cookbooks, chairs, inside pots, cupboards, mixer-bowls, I even poked the stick down behind the radiator…Clear. Thank God, I didn’t want to have to call out another musically gifted plumber. After five more minutes of frantic, fruitless and cold-sweating search, I eventually noticed the cardboard beneath the dishwasher; it was turned down at one corner and the tape was in tatters. In a flash everything became as clear as Vodka, Misty had decided that she liked it behind the kickboard so much that she’d managed to force her way past my obviously not-so-well constructed security wall and crept back into the dark safety of the space beneath the units. I could only wonder at what she’d be able to achieve with a vaulting horse, shovel, and trousers with string-drawn flaps in the pockets!
This time I carefully (after all wine is very precious stuff) removed the kickboard beneath the sink and looked in. Immediately I could see two shining yellow eyes staring back at me. There was Misty pressed right up to the back wall, half-hiding behind the sink’s waste pipe. I reached in to get her, but somehow she moved even further back. I stretched. I could almost reach her, almost but not quite. I’d have to find something to help me prize her out from behind the pipe, so I stood up and fetched the stick.
I positioned myself prone on the cold kitchen floor, stick in hand, and poised to grab Misty when the gentle poke from my not-so-gentle stick caused her to run out from behind the pipe. I looked at the pipe expecting to see Misty still hiding behind it. She wasn’t there! “DON’T PANIC…she’s simply moved further along the run of units”. I told myself. I began removing more kickboard; this was a fifteen foot run so there were quite a few to remove and soon I had a reasonable pile of best quality beech laminated kickboard stacked by the side of me. I peered into the gloom of the ‘world beneath the kitchen units’…Oh no…I couldn’t see her! I checked along the lengthy run of units, I checked again, and again, but I still couldn’t see her.
Just as a very bad word left my mouth Gaynor arrived in the kitchen disturbed by the clatter of my removing pieces of her kitchen, along with numerous shouted profanities; the spring clips holding the kickboards in place didn’t always ‘spring’ as easily as they should have. I explained what had happened telling her that Misty had been there one moment and gone the next, and I sarcastically suggested that “the damned kitten” would have been more aptly named ‘Houdini’ as she seemed to be an etraordinarily good escapologist.
Gaynor listened, sighed, shook her head and went to get a torch.
Twenty minutes of hopefully shining the torch around, and pointlessly searching every possible hiding place (again) we both agreed that Misty had vanished (again). So we opened another tin of red salmon and placed it and Misty’s litter tray in front of the sink, deciding that there was nothing to do but wait for her to appear again; after all Houdini had usually reappeared after disappearing. Gaynor wasn’t in college that day, so agreed to stay in the kitchen, listen for her, and wait for Misty to come out; after all with all the kickboards off the slightest noise or smallest movement would alert her to Misty’s presence.
Having done as much as we could, at least for now, I went off to work leaving Gaynor waiting patiently in the kitchen, ears alert and waiting for the faintest scratch or meow.
At ten I rang home for a progress report…no Misty. At eleven I rang again for another progress report…still no Misty. There was no Misty at twelve, and no Misty at one, she hadn’t showed up by two, or three, or four, or five, and by the time I arrived home at around six there was still no sign of her. We began to wonder if there had even ever been a Misty, perhaps we had imagined her; maybe she was just a dream. No, she had been real, and I proved her existence to us both by bringing up Misty’s photo on my phone. She was so small. She was so cute. Where could she have gone?
I decided to check beneath the units again.
I lay down on the floor and shone the torch at the waste pipe. Uh oh…was that what I thought it was? I reached into the dark space, stretching my arm as far as it could go until I could reach the pipe. There was a small hole in the floor where the waste pipe was fitted and it wasn’t a very tight fit. Maybe a very small and determined kitten could squeeze through that hole…the hole that led to the sub-cellar beneath the kitchen floor!
To be continued…
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