CatStuff: Trashy Kitty

TRASHY KITTY

There are just some places that you don’t expect your cat to be. Unfortunately, when it comes to bizarre hiding spots, my cat has stealth prowess. Her camouflage skills are so astute that I assume that she landed on the front steps of her former animal shelter after a windstorm during parachute practice which ended her relatively short-lived employment with the US Secret Service. She never fails to keep me guessing about her whereabouts, and no more so than the day she received her nickname "Trashy".

It was a Friday afternoon, and I was sitting on my futon engrossed in a book. My cat, Dora, was nowhere to be seen. All of a sudden, I heard a frantic cat scream and a large thud in the kitchen. These are relatively common sounds in my household as Dora is trademarked by her inordinately large number of unusual domestic accidents and reputation for paying for her veterinarian’s Winter Solstice cruise to Jamaica. After briefly patting myself on the back for adding "collision" to Dora’s medical insurance, I dashed to the kitchen wondering what Lucille Ball-worthy catastrophe befell my accident prone kitty.

My kitchen isn’t especially large. Opening my refrigerator door decreases my kitchen’s square footage by 75%. Therefore, the fact that I couldn’t immediately find my cat was perplexing, especially as alien abductions were not particularly common in my condo complex. I really started to get worried. Where could that feline be?

Then, my garbage can started walking across the floor.

Despite the fact that my garbage can had a lid on it with a very small push door, I knew I lived far enough from Amityville for it not to be walking on its own. I picked up the lid, and at the very bottom of the garbage can was my cat. She apparently fell off my counter, and somehow managed to hit the garbage can lid door just right, falling in. Seeing as my garbage can was 3-feet tall, completely empty, and quite heavy, she was simply sitting at the bottom of the can, unable to do much about her predicament. She looked up at me pitifully, saying the only thing she could.

"Meow?"

Which in kitty language translated to, "I know I look really stupid, but I can’t get out of here myself."

That is how my cat got the nickname "Trashy". Thankfully, she didn’t hurt anything other than her pride, and in a few minutes she was back to her normal self. I was simply grateful I didn’t have to take her to the medical clinic, and try to convince the veterinarian of the accuracy of the tale. If that was the case, I would be writing this tale in between attempted pet health insurance fraud hearings.