Today the cats reached two new milestones. Pandora has started jumping on the master bathroom counter so she can destroy my toothbrush and turn off the closet lights while I'm trying to get dressed. Together, Zeus and Pandora wreaked havoc on my desk in the upstairs office. They found the hidden stash of cat toys in a Bath and Body works bag. They are growing up, but Zeus proved today that he's still scared of monsters.
I was talking on the phone when I heard a terrible racket on the stairs outside my bedroom door. I looked up just in time to see an ivory shopping bag flying across the bedroom floor and into the bathroom. Presumably, the shopping bag contains Zeus. Pandora definitely can't run that fast. After a tremendous thud and some crinkling and tearing noise, I found part of the shopping bag crumpled in the entrance to the crawlspace under the whirlpool tub. The shopping bag was missing one handle and about two-thirds of one side of the bag.
Zeus spooks easily, so I wasn't too worried until I saw that the shopping bag handle was missing. Uh oh... what if he had it wrapped around his neck?? Brandon and I listened carefully, but we couldn't hear any noise coming from under the tub. I removed the second access panel to the crawl space, and discovered that there was a hole in the floor large enough for a cat to go below the floor and into the space above the garage ceiling. Still no noise from the cat. By this time, we both know that he's a goner if the shopping bag handle is around his neck. I could smell "scared kitty". It was the same odor that clung to Zeus when I first brought him home from the animal shelter.
There was something wet and slimy on the floor. I started wiping it up with a paper towel, thinking that Zeus had drooled on the floor as he ran. No, it wasn't drool. Think about it... What would happen to your bodily functions if you were grabbed and chased by a monster?
I sent Brandon downstairs to run the garage door up and down, hoping that the noise would scare Zeus out of his hiding place if he was still conscious. I heard a faint rustling noise and mewling after Brandon came back in the house. Zeus was definitely down under the floor. We called him, coaxed him with food rattling in a bowl, enticed him with the jingle of his favorite toy. Twenty-five minutes after being attacked by the monster, he finally poked his head up through the hole in the floor. I sent Brandon downstairs to disarm the monster by removing the remaining handle from the shopping bag. It took another fifteen minutes to convince Zeus to come out from under the bathtub.
Alas, the humiliation of Zeus wasn't finished yet. I had to rub him down with a wet wipe to eliminate the "scared kitty" smell and make sure he didn't ingest too many insulation fibers after his adventure in the crawlspace.
