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Harold and Maudie

I feel like a terrible kitty Momma saying this, but we lost Harold Monday night, and by “lost” I mean he couldn’t be found. Our cats are like dogs..they are constantly the center of our attention, constantly under foot. They’re not hiders. They’re all very social beings, and want to be around us, and each other. When they sleep, they sleep out in the open on a chair or bed. It’s easy to keep track of where they are, which is why it was so odd that one minute Harold was following me downstairs, and the next, he was missing. I immediately noticed, and asked Greg where he was. He didn’t know. We started looking in his normal places..upstairs in my studio he has a favorite chair, downstairs on the bed, in Sweet Pea’s bed in the dining room, in my office chair. He was nowhere to be found.

I started calling out to him, and he answered. The sound of his cries were coming somewhere in the walls of our house upstairs, which started to freak me out. “Where is he?? How the heck did he get in the wall???” I kept screaming at Greg. It was a spooky woo woo type of experience. I could hear him crying off in the distance, like something you’d see in a thriller movie or something. Greg was pretty freaked out, too, and we spent a frightening hour running upstairs, downstairs, back upstairs..looking everywhere for our baby boy. They are inside cats, but I even went outside, searched the porch..pulled out the couch, and chairs, and looked outdoors in the dark. No luck. His cries still sounded like he was in between the walls or under the stairs, but we looked under the stairs downstairs..twice. After an hour of searching, I was literally in a frantic panic, and hyperventilating. Greg told me to be quiet, so he could listen for him, and only then did I realize how loud I was breathing. I was scared out of my mind.  

Harold and Sweet Pea

We have two attics in our house. One is on the third floor, and the second one is just outside my office on the second floor. It has a little hobbit door, which even the shortest people, like me, have to duck to fit under. The door stays shut and locked all the time. Greg said he had opened the door just before we had gone downstairs, earlier, but he said there was no way Harold could have got past him..he didn’t leave the doorway, and would have seen him. I unlocked the door, and we stood in the doorway with a flashlight. I called Harold’s name several times, no reply. We did this three or four times, but it was dead silent in there. I thought it was a waste of time, and that if he had gone in there, he had fallen down in between the wall somewhere. Greg got smart, and crawled in under the heat ducts into this narrow little space that he could barely fit in, and found Harold walking around on the bathroom ceiling on the other side of the house. Whew!! Silly little bug gave us a horrible scare, and put up a huge fight when Greg tried to catch him. The attic door is now shut, locked AND barracked with heavy boxes.

Harold was showered with hugs and kisses, even though he didn’t want anything to do with us once he was back where he belonged. I’m pretty sure that within that hour timeslot, he had transformed himself into a great hunting lion in his mind, and he thought he was roaming wild, vast land in Africa. We’ve added Hunter to his name now. His full name is Harold Zip (you should see him zip zip through the house) Hunter (because attic) King-Lion (because oh, he is) Wood. He’s only 1 year old, so who knows what will be added in years to come. 😉