An Edgar Allan Poe moment | The Health Culture

I’ve been doing some home repairs lately that involve knocking out part of a wall. This has been going on for days, and it’s quite noisy. I don’t really mind the noise, but my two cats dislike the whole process mightily. When the repairman arrives, they try to make themselves invisible by hiding in new and obscure places. The littler cat, FuFu, is noticeably less brave than her brother. (She’s named after Fu Manchu’s mustache: She’s completely black, but had a prominent white whisker as a kitten.)

The other day, I couldn’t find FuFu after the repairman left. I went out and did errands. Came back. Still no FuFu. I walked around the house calling and whistling. The cats dislike whistling, and they usually come running to investigate the sound.

Finally I heard a faint meow. I tracked it down to the area where the repairman had been working. It was coming from behind the wall.

I had never looked at this wall once the drywall was removed. As far as I knew, FuFu was trapped between the drywall and a wooden wall – a space of maybe four or five inches. Plus, the drywall was nailed to studs, so she couldn’t move sideways either. Talk about claustrophobia! FuFu was entombed! How could the repairman not have seen her? Did she climb the wall and hide in the ceiling?

Only when it was all over did I understand what had happened. When the repairman went to lunch and all was quiet, FuFu went looking for a hiding place. What she found was a hole in a wall that opened into the area on the underside of a bathtub in the next room. A small creature could go through the hole, enter the enclosed space between the wall and the bathtub, and walk all the way to the opposite end of the tub. If you were sitting in the tub, it would be the space between the underside of the tub, the wall, and the floor. Very dark, but that doesn’t bother cats.

When the workman came back from lunch and starting making noise again, FuFu wasn’t about to come out of her hiding place. And there was no way he could have known she was in there. So he sealed the opening with drywall, painted it, and left for the day.

Once I heard her behind the wall, I called the workman, who lives 45 minutes away. He came right back and cut a hole in the drywall – a very loud process. Fifteen minutes later, I saw FuFu take tentative steps towards the light. She came through the opening cautiously: One paw … big look around … then another paw. I have a video of her exit.

Physically she seems fine, and two days later she seemed back to normal. To be safe, however, she spent that night and most of the next day in the recesses of a closet. The incident was immediately dubbed — and will be remembered as — “The Cask of Amontillfufu.”

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Image source: dougwoods on flickr