Happy Girl – Photo: L. Weikel

Mission Accomplished

Mission Accomplished! I won’t lie. It was a struggle of epic proportions. But we met The Precious Challenge head-on and won. It took a concerted and strategic effort executed by two adult humans to wrangle that feline into our makeshift means of transportation to the vet.

As you know, the plotting began last night. Karl and I vowed to be on top of the situation so we could avoid canceling yet another appointment due to Precious ‘going missing.’ Since Karl gets up earlier than I do, I urged him to be extra vigilant about remaining aware of her location. Ideally, he would nonchalantly encourage her to remain in the living room until it was time to leave for the appointment. Surreptitiously closing off doorways of escape was part of that strategy.

All was going well until I came downstairs. Karl had just gone outside to monitor the pups when I checked on Presh in the living room. I saw her dart behind the loveseat in the dining room. Check. At least I knew where she was. Before closing the door between the kitchen and the dining room, I made sure the door leading up the pie-shaped stairway to our second floor was shut tight. Granted, there was no latch, but it wedged snugly tight. I was as satisfied as I could be under the circumstances.

The Chase

This wouldn’t be a post if it didn’t end up being an absolute debacle. Forty five minutes before our appointment, I had an uneasy feeling. “Is Precious still in the dining room?”

Karl checked. “Nope. Can’t find her. Oh – and the door to upstairs was pried open.”

“Aaarrggh.” The lack of latches on various doors in our house is a recurring problem. Truth be told, it’s rarely an issue – except (mostly) when trying to keep puppies or runaway cats from messing around unsupervised in the bedrooms upstairs.

We immediately launched into a full-scale search. Initial tactics, however, were deliberately gentle and persuasive. We locked the pups into their crate and opened up a can of her favorite food. Shutting all the doors, including the one between the living/dining room and kitchen, and the door leading from our bedroom (which is located at the top of the other set of pie-shaped stairs leading from the kitchen to our bedroom) was paramount. We knew we were going to need to trap her.

She’s been known to hide in our room and furtively creep down the stairs to eat from her bowl in the kitchen. She seemed insulted we’d think she’d fall for that. Lame.

I knew her trail was cold when we heard ZERO blood-curdling mrrrows. The house was strangely silent. Had that brat somehow managed to sneak outside when Karl came inside with the pups? I was crestfallen. I know how stressed out she is and how tremendously much better she felt after her first shot last September. All I wanted to do was help her feel better.

Found Our Quarry

I heard the guttural howls a millisecond before Karl yelled, “Found her!” Ah. She was in our bedroom.

Karl, on his knees and already armed with a pillow case and flashlight, was peering under the bed when I crested the stairs. A broom lay at the ready. No human arms would be willingly flayed if it could be avoided.

“I can’t see her,” he said grimly as I continued calling to her in a sing-song voice. A moan that sounded like it was coming from the gates of hell tipped us off that she wasn’t buying it.

I got on my knees on the other side of the bed. Nope. No sign of her. Except – the material covering the box spring seemed to be hanging a bit low in one place.

“She’s in the box spring. She ripped that sucker open and is inside the framework.” We laughed at her psychotic efforts to evade being given a medicine that would make her feel dramatically better.

Our box spring is split (precisely because of those pie shaped stairs), and Karl lifted the one harboring our fugitive. Oh! The yowls of agony. Nevertheless, she soon realized the futility (or thought she could escape again) and jumped out of the box spring, scrambling down the steps toward the kitchen.

THWARTED. The door was closed. She was trapped between the closed door at the bottom of the steps and the two of us at the top. The stairwell only amplified her horrific gurglings of terror.

Bagged Her

Once she realized the jig was up, she continued to struggle, but did allow me to envelope her in a hooded sweatshirt nearby, which we then used to ‘double-bag’ her by placing the sweatshirt into the aforementioned pillowcase.

She didn’t struggle. She surrendered – if far from quietly. Oh no, she wanted the entire household to know that she was being led to her execution.

The funny thing is, once bagged, Precious and I went straight out to the car, strapped ourselves into the driver’s seat and drove up to the vet. She didn’t move a muscle. (But she did continue to moan pathetically.)

The Appointment

Doris, my partner in crime at the vet’s office, teased me. There was Precious, laying on the examining table, purring contentedly. I assure you, it was not a nervous terror purr. No. She was happy as a clam and making my harrowing story of shredded box springs seem quite unbelievable. “Sure Lisa,” she said with a grin.

She didn’t even flinch when she received her shot.

And since we came home? She once again is giving off vibes that say, “Oh Mommy. I feel sooo much better already. Why didn’t we do this a couple weeks ago?”

Why didn’t we indeed.

(T+51)