Meownos: The Paws of Fate

Once upon a time, there was a dark mystery, settled like a crow on the roof of our home in the quiet town of Holden.

No, it was actually dark, as in, the cat's paws were black, y'all.

One morning when we were getting ready for work, Flyboy came bopping in, looking very satisfied with himself. He hopped up on the counter, and I saw that his paws were FILTHY, covered with black soot of some kind, and he had a crown of spiderwebs on. I didn't really have time to discuss it with him, but when Speed and I got home that night, he was STILL totally gross, and remained so through a couple of washings.

We figured that Flyboy - however improbably - had somehow developed enough grace to have jumped the fireplace screen without knocking it over, and to then hop out again after having a nice, satisfying romp in the grate. Now, if you're a cat owner, you know how cats are - one moment, full of lissome movements and impossible, invisible, silent escapes and attacks, the next second, managing to knock over an entire bookcase and its contents, your TV, and following it all up with a dash directly into a door or similar solid object. We chalked it up to the former, mostly because we had no other option. Speed turned the screen around so it was flush with the bricks of the mantle, and we figured we were good.

Well, he appeared a few more times, looking dirty again and bedecked in spider webs. Since he didn't present anything as impressive as his first performance, we assumed he was just nosing into dark and spider infested corners of the basement or something.

So tonight I was switching the laundry, and I noticed some dirty pawprints on top of the dryer. And then I looked up the wall, and saw dirty pawprints THERE. What Flyboy had been doing was hopping up on the pipes along the wall over the washer, and using that access route to get into the ceiling space and then to the boiler room. This also made clear another cat incident, wherein Speed came home to hear mewing in the basement, and upon checking it out, found Cady stuck in the boiler room.

Le sigh.