More Adventures in Homeownership

So the ex came over to get his furniture out of the basement on Friday night. No, I am not moving. I am planning to tear up the carpet, paint the rough wood paneling SW's "Snowbound" and turn this puppy into my own underground tropic beach house/exercise room this winter. Stop laughing. I can't make it look worse than it does, plus a finished basement is like a freebie room--it's nice when it looks good, but everyone expects it to look crappy. So I have no perfectionist fears.

I thought he was just coming to pick up some folding chairs, but he had intended to get the big table and chairs out and take it to the Goodwill. I didn't have the heart to tell him the Kamm's Corners Goodwill is closed, but neither did I want the responsibility of listing this stuff on Freecycle. So I shut up most of the cats in the kitchen and he took the stuff out the side door. I couldn't catch Tom Collins and Mencken, so I kept watch on the door to make sure they did not escape. No, they did not go running out into the night. It turned out much worse.

So after the ex left, I opened some wet food to do a cat count. Where's Mencken? I call him upstairs. I call him downstairs. I call outside (he's not called The Silent Scamper for nothing). And then I hear him in the basement. It sounds like he's behind the wall, crying. How the hell did he get there? Where is he?

I turn off the furnace to hear better. I get the folding chair and the flashlight. I'm panicking because I can't see him, but when I shine the light he cries more. It doesn't look like he's at the foot of the wall behind the wall with the shelves. It doesn't look like he's up on the ducts, like where Cain used to hide in the summer.

Manic adrenaline takes over. I look for ways I could take apart the wall. Can I saw through the paneling? Can I remove it if I pry off the trim? Can I remove the wall from the utility room side? Can I run out to Home Depot and buy a hammer? Crap, I don't have the right tools for this. I hardly have any tools at all. I start taking apart some of the dropped ceiling tiles to see if I can tear the wall down from the top.

Down comes an ancient kitty toy, a metal ball with a mouse inside. And used condoms stuck to the back of the tiles. I curse the former owners yet again. "Pigfucker"is an appropriate term for them.

But the good thing is that Mencken cries more, and I can see him. He's around the curve of a duct in a hidey hole. He's not stuck, because he can pop himself in and out. Poor baby is just scared. "Mommy's here, Menckey" I say. I never call myself mommy to my cats. I look at trying to take apart some of the ductwork. No tools. I'm a little calmer now. I keep talking to him and eventually lure him out of the hole. He walks very carefully along the beams to the utility room wall, and I meet him on the stepstool and pick him up. I take him to the kitchen for wet food.

I love my cats, even when situations like this spur me to crazy action. We had a dog when I was a little kid, but I never had a pet until last year when I got the cats. It's a complex relationship--I love them, they are amusing and good companions, but I try not to become too much of a crazy cat woman about them. But on a darker note, caring for them is a way of proving to myself that I am a good person. My ex had a way of convincing me I was a difficult monster, and I didn't question his opinion for a long time when he'd say rubbish like that if I had a cat or a child I'd lose interest after a while. I didn't realize that it was a projection of himself onto me and our relationship. So when we split, one of the first things I did (although I did have to be talked into it) was to get the cats. Yes, they cost money and break things and eat anything growing that's brought into the house. But they are so much more than that. To be trite, loving them and caring for them adds so much to my life than they cost. To be even more cliche and trite, I'm a better person because of them.