So… I was getting a cat out from behind the water heater.
Okay, let me back up. It was the morning of Independence Day (U.S.) and I was sleeping late because two days earlier I had been plagued with terrible headaches and I didn’t want that to repeat. So I was getting up at around 10, or at least that was my plan. I had been in a semiconscious state for about ten minutes when I heard a crash. I then heard my Mom calling a name I recognized as a cat. (The cat isn’t ours but she insisted on calling him ‘Mike’) After I heard some more thumping for a few moments, I got up, descended my ladder, and walked into the living room. One the floor was a shattered CD case of an MST3K recording and several books. I continued out to the kitchen where my Mother informed me that ‘Mike’ had gotten in and was being chased around the house by our indoor cat. As I entered, Mother was able to shut the pantry door, trapping him on what was once a back porch. She left to go around and open the back door, I decided the simpler thing to do was to open the door carefully and then open the back, which I did, but not before the cat ran to the other side of the room and tucked himself into the corner.
After several minutes with the back door open we declared him out and closed it. Inspecting things to see what had fallen over, I found that ‘Mike’ was still very much tucked in the corner next to the water heater. After obtaining some gloves and opening the back door, I tried to gently pick him up and put him outside. He did not agree with this plan. The second my hand got near him he began jumping like a flea straight up the wall. After several unsuccessful jumps he managed to grab onto the water heater’s edge. How I have no idea, because, if you’ve ever seen a water heater you know, there’s nowhere to grab. After a few awkward dangling moments he was on top. From my now inferior position I tried to coax him toward the door. Instead he looked in the other direction and found the corner between the wall and the heater. As I reached to block the hole, and hopefully push him down, he decided ‘bombs away’ and jumped head first into said hole.
So now we had a trapped cat. Looking through a small space between the heater and wall revealed an eye, and some ear twitching. At this moment we had to wake my Father, who would know how to shut off the water. It turned into shutting off the water to the whole house due to the fact that the heater has no cutoff. We then drained the heater, which took the better part of an hour.
The problem with an empty water heater is that there is still no good way to move it. Especially if it’s as shoddily worked into an old shoddy house as mine. The house was done well, but to say the utilities weren’t is an understatement. Anyway, we had to disconnect the water and the gas, and even then there were several unbendable pipes that allowed for virtually no movement on the part of the heater. After fifteen minutes we managed to move the bottom enough so that ‘Mike’ could turn right-side up. At this point we decided to let him jump up on his own, so we put a board in under him (he was already standing on the trim) and moved it slowly up. He jumped just above it each time until he was again on the top of the heater.
At this point I backed away having seen this very afraid cat leap up into windows, claws bared, about an hour ago. My Father, however, reached for him, I assume to pick him up. At this point he exploded into a ball of kitty fury and somehow landed on the floor. As I quickly scooted out of the way he burst past me and out the back door.
This was not how I wanted to spend the morning of the Fourth. But I assume it wasn’t how ‘Mike’ wanted to, either. I think however, unfortunately, it is safe to say, we won’t be seeing him any time soon. Probably for good reason. (Unfortunately as well, I got no pictures)
