omg we had the worst adventure just now. richard and i were playing our version of trivial pursuit, which consists of his reading me all the questions and my trying to come up with the answers, no board, no dice, no pieces, just the questions, ma'am, when i heard chava suddeny yowling in terror. i raced to where i thought she was and she was... nowhere. we looked everywhere. her cries seemed to come from every part of the house at once. we looked in richard's room, where she had sneaked in earlier. i told richard to look downstairs.

we don't let the babies downstairs because it is too easy for them to get lost, there are plants that could poison them, we keep cleaning stuff down there that could poison them, and the laundry room down there has no ceiling. years ago, our late great layla got down there, climbed up into the ducts and wandered through them, similarly yowling. we had to take a vent cover off the wall and reach down to try to drag her up. she wasn't especially cooperative.

so i told richard to look downstairs but he couldn't find chava, and he didn't understand about the laundry room ceiling, so i went down myself (painful because of my knees) and called up to her but got no response. by then the yowling had stopped and i was afraid she had hurt herself and passed out.

i went back upstairs and then i heard her scrambling through the pipes. she was indeed in the ducts. we went to the vent through which we had rescued layla and tried to unscrew it from the wall, but the screws were old, rusty and in crookedly to boot. furthermore, richard was having no luck with the flat screwdriver he'd asked for. i finally got down on the floor, no easy feat for me, and discovered that the screws were phillips types. so with a phillips screwdriver, and then with a smaller version of same, i worked on one of the screws, and chava pressed against the vent from the other side so i could see and feel her fur. sometimes she murmured but she seemed to know i was trying to rescue her.

finally i asked richard to get me the wd40 but he couldn't find it, so i asked him to work on the other screw while i went to find it, which i did... just as he was getting the original screw loose. he reached in for her but couldn't get her. i leaned down and opened the loose side of the vent wider and got her out.

she is a dark gray cat, almost blue. well, that's what color she USED to be. she is a decidedly lighter shade of gray now, and she triggered my asthma, not to mention i couldn't stand up by myself because my knees hurt so much, pressed against the floor (i was lying on my stomach to deal with the screw). richard had to lift me up, and i am not light. i gave chava something of a sponge bath and she is still dirty but much less so. she is behaving as if nothing has happened but i was hysterical, crying, fearing the worst, in pain and quite frustrated, and mad at richard for letting chava downstairs to begin with (i hadn't been downstairs; sometimes days pass before i go there). he swore she never came out of his room, but obviously she did, and he swore he was careful as always opening the door to the lower level but obviously he was oblivious.

and that was our awful adventure and now i have to remember where i put the inhaler that's NOT empty.

g

p.s. this is an old picture. she is nine and a half months old now. but i thought i'd use this to illustrate how very upset she currently is about her adventure.