Adventures in Cat-sitting

The lady has been cat-sitting for friends and acquaintances off and on for years. Everything has always gone very smoothly until Christmas week. This is the story as she told it to me. No names have been changed to protect the guilty. And, I'm going to give away the ending and say that Sly is safe and sound.

Sly is a small, fluffy tuxedo cat who is very sweet and playful.

Mr. Innocent

He used to be an indoor-outdoor cat, but is now an indoor cat only. He is allowed some brief time on a third story deck to look out and relax in the sun.

One day it was unseasonably warm and the small 1/2 bath where Sly's litter-box is kept was very stuffy, so the lady opened the very small bathroom window about four inches for ventilation. It is up very high and is an unusual window that lifts up and locks in place. When the lady left that evening, she checked all the sliding doors as usual, but...she forgot all about that little bathroom window.

When she returned the next morning, she couldn't find Sly. She searched the whole house and he was nowhere to be found. When she checked the 1/2 bath for a second time, she looked up and saw that the screen was missing from the small bathroom window. She knew immediately that Sly had gotten out.

The lady went outside and looked down the hill to the backyard. There, at the very bottom of the mostly unfenced yard, was Sly. He was sitting there, looking at a deer. The lady walked towards him and when she got close, he dashed behind the neighbor's fence and ran along it, away from her. She started talking in that voice that cats seem to like. "Sly, are you hungry?" Would you like some breakfast?" He crawled under the fence toward the lady, she picked him up and walked back into the house.

The lady told Sly's human what happened. Sly's human was very understanding (whew) and said that Sly was "a handful." Later that week when she came home from her trip, Sly ran out the door and had to be coaxed back in after he ran across the street. Sly's human said that he will be put in a room with the door closed before she opens the front door again!

"I don't know nuttin' about no jailbreak."