Animal Rescue--Nathan Style

While we were bouncing between Shabbona and Pecatonica Saturday, our landlord and a plumber were redoing the tile in our bathroom. The old tile had come away from the wall and water was dripping behind it to the apartment below us.

Nathan and I drove separately and I got home first. Upon arriving, I found the work wasn't done, with just boards up and a hole around the knob for water. I also found one cat, Hyperion. Hecate was nowhere in sight. If you remember from an earlier post, this is a habit of hers. So, before I panicked, I looked all over the apartment. Literally, all over. I could not find her anywhere. Then, I started panicking.

I went downstairs and knocked on our neighbor's door and she said she hadn't seen a little black kitten, but she would let us know if she did. Nathan got home and called the landlord, who said the cats had been in the apartment the whole time. Then, the downstairs neighbor knocked on the door and told me she never was able to hear the cats, but she could hear one coming from just above her bathroom.

I went into our bathroom and bent down in front of the water knob and called for her. I heard a very small "mew." Hecate had been boarded up in the wall. We called the landlord and he came right over and unscrewed the bottom board. Hecate was sitting on a ledge about three feet below the level of the bathtub.

It took about two hours to lure her with food to a place just underneath the tub where Nathan could reach his hand in and pull her out. We immediately took her out of the bathroom and closed the door, giving her the food we had used to lure her. She ate pretty heartily, then went to use the litter box right away.

Hecate's hiding space was on a ledge just to the left and underneath the white snaking pipe. She was there for quite a while, then she found a ledge and ended up underneath the bathtub.