the escape kitty.

Don't let her tough exterior fool you. This little kitty will melt your heart.

When we first got Blanche, she had been a crazy-outdoor-wild cat. Did I ever tell you how we saved her?

One morning, MH woke up early and heard the kittens (that lived outside at the time) meowing. She went outside to see them, and came in two minutes later sobbing. A kitten had gotten stuck in the drainpipe, she told me. She dragged me outside, still crying uncontrollably, and showed me where she heard the meowing. Sure enough, I heard it, too. The gutter was one that went directly into the ground, so there was no opening to peer into. There we were, six o'clock in the morning, in our pajamas, trying to pull apart the drain pipe and rescue the kitty. When I finally got it apart, a tiny white kitten looked up at me and mewed. When she stumbled out of the pipe, we saw that she was shivering, muddy, and soaking wet. We brought her inside (for the first time ever) and rubbed her down with towels. We almost decided to call her "Gertie the Gutter Cat." I think that was her first interaction with people.

I guess since then she's enjoyed being rescued. Must be some kind of cat-up-the-tree syndrome. One time when we were still looking for homes for the other two kittens and all three were in the house, they disappeared. We spent an entire afternoon and evening pulling the house apart. In the end, we just figured they must have gotten into the basement and escaped through some hole. It was a stressful (and sad) day. But that night, they magically appeared, prancing across the living room floor as if saying, "La dee dah, we sure fooled you silly humans . . ." Turns out, they had gone up underneath a recliner and burrowed there all day. Silly humans.

The third time Blanche went missing, we searched high and low (and looked in the recliner this time, too) but couldn't find her. Later that day, MH opened the coat closet and Blanche came tumbling out. She snuck in there and fell asleep, and someone shut the door on her.

We've gotten used to this, by now, and know all her main hiding places. But yesterday was something different.

She, once again, was gone all afternoon. We were also dog-sitting at the time, so we just chalked it up to fear of a never-before-seen animal and didn't worry too much about it. Later that night, my mom and I were watching You've Got Mail (my new favorite!) when we heard a scramble of paws and a large thud in the next room, followed by hissing like we've never heard before. The dog came running out, and we ran in. We looked around. There was nothing there. But when we called Blanche's name, a drawer magically pushed itself out of the desk a tad, and we heard more hissing. We looked at each other timidly, and sure hoped it was Blanche that we were hearing.

I slowly pulled out the drawer and spied the cat stuck waaaay in the back. We had to pull out three drawers before we could reach her. We can't decide if she had really been stuck in there all afternoon, or if she squeezed herself up there when the dog ran in. Either way, we're getting a little tired of all the worrying and rescuing and worrying and rescuing some more.

She's suffering from some pretty hardcore martyrdom syndrome.

(Photos via fofurasfelinas, alleys, formeforyou, misskatrine)

(Only the first photo is Blanche. The rest are just cute kitties from Flickr.)