Tachyon's Great Dismal Adventure in Scaryland

About three weeks ago our Siamese, Tachyon, being relatively new to our house and very shy, began exploring. He sniffed everywhere when no one else was around. We ignored him all day that Saturday. Then we noticed he was gone--totally completely can't-be-found gone. How?

Good old American know-how that needs
a wrench or two to make it work

At last we figured out Tachyon had squeezed through a narrow crack in the corroding partition between the bedroom's air conditioner and the window frame. He was out in the Great Wide Open. I figured Tachyon was miles away, but I went out for the heck of it a fourth time that night and spotted him. Our butthead Tikki-Takki was under a pine tree by the house, looking wet and scared and miserable and confused. He would not come to me, though. I tried for an hour to get the little bastard sweetie to get close enough to catch him, even chased him all around the house once and under the front deck, to no avail. He wasn't coming back in, no matter how miserable he looked.

Cat books say that housecats who get outside become too scared to go to their owners. This is worse than dumb. I've been outside lots of times yet always came inside because that's where the food is. That's why cats are stupid. We had to take action, or else Scruffles would get mopey and Bear would be more miserable than the blasted cat.

After getting advice from a tech at the Banfield vet clinic, we went to a big tractor supply company. There we bought two medium-size humane traps. We brought them home, opened two cans of wet cat food, and used them as bait deep inside the traps. We were soooooo smart.

The next morning, we went out. The traps were not sprung, but all the cat food was eaten. We did this three nights running, each time losing two cans of cat food with no traps sprung. What the #### was going on?

We brought the traps inside the house and tried to figure out what went wrong. We discovered that the trap release mechanisms for both were slightly off. We got pliers and fixed them, then put the traps put once more.

Three hours later that night, about 10 p.m., I checked. Both traps were full of yowling outraged terrified cats. One was a feral cat from the local neighborhood. The other held Tachyon.

I can't breathe! I can't breathe!

I opened the trap for the feral cat, and it disappeared so fast I did not even notice it was gone. Scruffles said it went off into the bush at the speed of light.

We took Tachyon inside and looked him over: no scratches, no missing parts, no evident rabies or leprosy or zombie-ism. We opened the trap and waited for our lovable prodigal cretin to rejoin his cozy lunatic asylum.

My laser eyes, they do nothing!

He didn't, because he was facing the wrong way in the trap. He was trying to get out the back of the trap and he was howling his fuzzy brainless head off in frustration. We pointed and shouted and used sign language and did everything we could, but he remained clueless. Finally I reached in and poked him in the butt. He snapped right around and ran out and vanished into the bedroom.

In about 15 minutes Tack came out and was perfectly normal. Even better than normal. He had changed from being a wallflower to being an adorable in-your-face pain in the ass, and he stayed that way.

It was still a good idea to bring him back to his family, though. No, I lied. It was a horrible idea. He sleeps on my arm when I'm trying to sleep and cries like he's got a thistle up his butt when he thinks he's being ignored. A horrible idea, getting him back, but we're stuck with him now.