Two Crazy Lands Collide

I spent most of Friday morning with Owner, liberating kitties stuck under our office building. We'd had some people out to close up all access to the areas underneath both buildings. Unfortunately, we forgot to check whether there were any live animals under there.

Owner called me while the Information Superhighway and I were having our usual pre-8:00 a.m. conversation. Owner buzzed the Highway and wanted to know if I was there. I knew my day was going to get off to a bad start. He wanted me to find a hammer so he could break some boards the workers used to permanently close a crawlspace door. I couldn't find a hammer. Wait a minute. It immediately felt like a bad dream from my childhood.

My dad could never find his tools. He never looked for his tools. He either made me, my mom or his wife go look for them. If we couldn't find them or if we didn't find them fast enough, bam! Another great opportunity for him to physically hurt someone. I tend to get anxious when people ask me for tools and that kind of post traumatic stress disorder anxiety is hard to get rid of once it's arisen. It was with me all day.

I couldn't find a hammer. Owner called again and demanded that I get downstairs. We'd only been at the task for ten minutes, but it already felt like years. I went downstairs and found he'd broken the boards without a hammer. The next problem was that we needed to ensure that the cat(s) got out before we boarded it back up. We sat at the patio table and waited. And waited. And waited. Owner told me I had to stay there until the cat(s) came out. Again, it seemed too familiar, like when my dad told me to go outside and look for a lost ring and not to come back in until I found it. Or a million other times when I had to stay somewhere until I accomplished something inherently impossible, knowing that when I was unable to accomplish it, my dad would use it as an excuse to hurt me more. (There would be some physical violence during the attempts to accomplish the impossible, on a periodic basis, depending on how good my dad wanted to feel.)

Friday morning, as I sat there and tried not to think about the number of allergens in the air, Foot Lady came out to smoke a cigarette. She wanted to know what was going on, so I filled her in. She made some comment about the workers boarding up the entries to the crawlspace under the main building. Something clicked.

I hadn't seen my black and white boy kitty and his best pal in a couple of days. I'd also noted that not much food had been consumed during that time. I had assumed that they were hiding out, waiting for the workers to go away. It dawned on me that they had to be under the building.

I walked along the side of the building next to Lillian's house. I called as I walked and, about half way down the alley, I heard a little meow coming from one of the air vents. Good news, bad news. They were going to be liberated, but I had to tell Owner in order for that to happen.

Owner came downstairs and found a way to let the cats out. Black and white kitty stuck his head out of the hole about 15 minutes after it was opened. He's always been very skittish and you know being trapped under a building for a couple of days couldn't have done much for his nerves. Later on, I found him lounging around the monkey grass as if nothing ever happened. I was still worried about his pal, but she showed up Saturday morning.

The funny thing is that, until I started writing, it didn't dawn on me how triggering the whole event had been. My conversation with the Superhighway first thing that morning triggered a flashback and I wrote off my all day jumpiness to that. I guess Friday was an all-around Remember Dad day. I hate it when I have those days. Another is coming up. His birthday is May 16. I'm going to start steeling myself for it right now. Maybe someone would like for me to find a hammer. Or a child's ring in a huge yard.