Last night, I climbed into bed beside a sleeping Marie and closed my eyes. I was quickly headed down and out. But I got brought back up by a thump that I thought came from the furnace duct. I sat up and waited.
A moment later I heard a faint meowing, and I knew there was a second cat. I got up, put on pants, shoes and a sweater, grabbed a flashlight and headed for the basement.
When I opened the door from the basement into the crawl space, I found the trap empty, except for the undisturbed cat food bait; the entrance gate was still open. "Shit," I thought, "a smart one." I figured he'd avoided the trap, either because he'd seen the other cat in it, or because he was kept away by the still strong scent of cat piss.
But when I shone the flashlight into the deeper recesses of the crawl space, there he was -- Billy -- looking right at me. I took the light out of his eyes and called to him, and he came right out. He stopped to rub against my legs and chat with me and, once I'd closed the door to the crawl space, he did the "Billy stand": rising up on his back legs to invite my hand to his head, then standing as high as he can to intensify his pleasure. And mine.
I let him out of the basement, but he hung around, waiting for a handout. So I gave him a small bowl of kitty chow. That was probably a bad idea, because he's a well-known mooch throughout this part of the neighborhood, but I was so damned glad to see him clean and sleek and healthy and happy.
Welcome back, Billy!
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