Cats, Snakes and Holes

  I've discovered a nice website called Medium which has essays on a variety of topics from the mundane to the humorous to the sad.  I wrote a piece on Affluenza not being a defense but mostly, I enjoy reading other peoples writings.

Yesterday, I came across this hilarious piece on a cat, a sledgehammer and a selfie.  It is the story of a man who went to extreme lengths to find a cat who had disappeared into the walls.  I laughed through the whole piece, loved the drawings and the videos. 

One reason this struck a chord is I know two people who went through similar events.  One with a cat and one with a snake.  The first is a friend who lives out in California.  One day her cat disappeared and she searched the whole house before she heard meowing in the wall near the garage.  She tried to figure out exactly where the cat was before silence struck.  She was not able to.  Over the next week, she'd hear meowing periodically from different locations.  About the time her son started tearing the walls apart, the cat magically appeared in the closet in her room.

This was long before the selfie stick came out so she had to look the old fashioned way.  She had to listen and follow the cries of her cat.  The cat was dehydrated and hungry but fine.  I think she had her son go through to look for holes to patch but I'm not sure he ever found any.

The second one had to do with a snake in the local science room.   I'm not sure how the snake got out of the fish tank but it did and disappeared completely.  The science teacher tore the room apart looking for the snake.  He found a small hole near the corner by the heating pipes but could not figure out where the snake went.  He gave up and after a while decided the snake was probably dead yet there was no rotting smell anywhere in the building.  So he just shrugged his shoulders and went about his business.

A week or two later, the night security was making their rounds at about 3 AM and I gather the guy spotted the snake slithering across the floor, screamed loud enough for the other security guy to come running.  They promptly called the science teacher to come get his stray. 

I heard about it the next morning from the science teacher.  He was thrilled the snake had been found but was not happy to be woken up in the middle of the night.  He reinforced the security of the cages to make sure neither the snakes could get loose on their own, nor be let loose by a mischievous student wanting to play a prank.

I suspect everyone knows someone who has undergone the same type of adventure as the author of the piece.