Well, that’s an experience I don’t care to repeat. Specifically, dragging a very scared and confused Maine Coon out from under a deck that hasn’t ever heard the word “clean” in its life.

Somehow, the cat got out. Yum Yum belongs to A’s parents; we almost adopted her along with Wu back in October 2004, but they decided to keep her after all. They are on a month-long vacation, so we’re keeping her at our house so she isn’t lonely all day except for half an hour when someone stops by to feed her. She is painfully skittish and shy, but she’s warmed up to us over the past few weeks.

She’s a fully-pedigreed Maine Coon, and is not allowed outside. She’d been sniffing around the old server that blocks off the cat door (we’ll take that away when she goes home) but we shooed her away every time. Then today I saw that the server was lying flat instead of standing up, leaving the cat door half-unblocked: cats can wriggle out, but the server keeps them from coming back in. It’s mostly an anti-raccoon device, because we usually just let the cats back in the front door. While Yum Yum’s been here, we’ve been letting the others out through the front door, too. But the server was down flat today when I got home from work. I noticed it while I was preparing Yum Yum’s dinner (did I mention she’s spoiled?), and when I brought the food upstairs I discovered she wasn’t around. I started calling all over the house, and I called out in the garage and even out front and out back. No kitty. I had glanced under the deck once, but it wasn’t until I’d been looking for a good 20 minutes that I took a good look under there, and I spotted a pair of eyes.

The deck is built in a strange way, you can look under it from the left and right but not the front (the bottom being the part against the house), and you can only access it from the right; it’s about six or eight inches above the ground. I went around to the other side and got down on the ground, only to discover that the eyes belonged to Truffle. But then I looked again - and saw another pair of eyes, with a much fluffier face around them. So I found the cat, great! But how on earth could I get her out?

I changed out of my work clothes and put on jeans and an old t-shirt. I grabbed her dinner bowl and went back to where I could see her. Truffle was still under there, and he was quite interested in the food, but I wouldn’t let him have any; he left without making a fuss. I kept talking to Yum Yum, and I held the food as close to her as I could. She responded quite well, and was clearly hungry and lonely. She flirted with me a lot - sniffing the food, marking the underside of the deck, waving her leaf-strewn tail around. She almost came out all by herself, but then she started going back the other way. I finally got her a little closer to me, and I just grabbed her ruff. I made sure I had her tightly, and I just pulled her out - she didn’t resist very much. I scooped her up; she was terrified and wanted to get away but I managed to get her back in the house. I put her down and she immediately ran upstairs, so I went back out to get the bowl from under the deck. Of course, it was being thoroughly enjoyed by Truffle, but he wasn’t too crushed when I took it away from him.

I expected Yum Yum would hide under the bed for a few hours, so I didn’t worry about getting her cleaned up - it could wait until she came out. I just went ahead and made my dinner and brought it back upstairs…and she was hanging out by the food dish! So I made her some fresh dinner (Mischa had finished the rest of what I took away from Truffle, because he is such a fattie) and she chowed down with gusto. She’s now sitting right by me on the bed. Her body is actually in pretty good shape, but her tail is an absolute disaster. She is not going to appreciate the brushing that is to come.