The backstory: about five years ago, Neighbor Kid built my cats a hotel out of old vacuum cleaner boxes (yes, somehow his family had more than one to contribute to the cause), with little doors and windows cut out, the three stories held together with twine. It was too big for my living room, so I put it out in the garage, and it's been there, uninhabited, ever since. Cut to this summer, when my cat Creed ran away and I put up lost-cat signs. Cut again to last weekend, when I got two phone calls asking about my lost cat, my phone number still being up at the EZ Stop. Some woman had found a black and white female, probably with kittens, living under her shed. This couldn't have been my grey boycat. I wished her the best.
Cut to yesterday, an hour before I had to go to class, when I discover (slowly, over a series of visits) that there are cats hiding out in my garage. A black and white mama and two kittens, I think. A cat family, or a clan of little Trowbridge warriors maybe. First, I just saw one wander in, and it didn't give me too much pause, since I see neighborhood cats around sometimes, but this one was little so I went to check on it. And once inside the garage, where did I find them huddled up? Seriously and literally, in Neighbor Kid's cardboard cat hotel. I'm a fiction writer, and I say, you can't make this shit up.
I've given them some food and water, and at Heikks' suggestion, some sleeping bags to keep warm in until I can catch them and take them to the Humane Society. But I can't catch them. They are fast, and not at all into me. And they can hide somewhere I can't see or reach in the garage's attic space. The littlest one kept running into things, a total spaz. I stopped chasing out of worry about damage to his tiny brain. Tips on luring them out appreciated.
But now I'm weirded out by the weekend's phone call. Was the woman saying she'd found a black-and-white cat with kittens telling me what she saw, or was she predicting my future? Was I calling myself from two days later with a heads-up? I wish she'd call again so I could pay attention to her voice, to see if she sounds like me.
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