Cat in a Bag

This is one of those things that seems funny, but is not funny. Last night Drew was out, the kids were in bed, and I was eating dinner while watching The Daily Show. It was approximately 8:20 PM when suddenly I heard a racket that scared me so bad I actually got lightheaded. I was really scared that someone was breaking into our house. First it sounded like pounding, or lots of heavy things being dumped out of a bag or box or cabinet, then something came flying up the stairs and running all across the first floor. I quietly got up and upon seeing all the fur that came flying, and I knew it was Maggie. Turns out, she was stuck in a plastic grocery bag. I let her calm down and a little while later tried to get at her and could get nowhere near her.

Now, Maggie is NOT a “lap cat.” She doesn’t enjoy being held or petted, so I knew this was not going to be easy. Finally, around 11 I just went to bed because she was quiet somewhere and let’s face it – I had to go to sleep at some point.

This morning Noah woke up around 5:20, and he and I were sitting in the rocking chair watching “Sesame” when I heard this pathetic mewing. I got up to look, quietly calling Maggie’s name, and she came tearing out from behind the couch, terrifying Noah who now I had to calm down as well. Luckily that wasn’t so difficult and I explained that Maggie was stuck in a bag and was scared because she couldn’t get it off her. I tracked her down to our bedroom — she likes to hide under the bed. I was able to get hold of the plastic bag, but it was really on her good — it wasn’t just around her head lightly, it was stuck on her body, poor thing.

I left her alone for another couple minutes, but the mewing was so sad, I had to do something. So I looked under the bed again and she had moved toward the other side. I went over there telling her very quietly that I was going to help her (meanwhile I was deathly afraid she would scratch me up). Luckily, our bed is an iron sleiqh bed which means there are wide openings in the headboard and plenty of room for her to poke her head up to the mattreess. That’s what she was doing. And that’s when I noticed that she had now gotten herself caught up in a paper shopping bag (you know, one with those really sturdy handles like you get in specialty shops?). Basically she’d gotten herself into a situation where she couldn’t go anywhere and was completely vulnerable — the handles from the second bag were somehow around her neck and one of her legs. How the hell did she do this???

At any rate, since she couldn’t do anything, I started to rip apart the paper bag, but then decided to do the plastic bag first so she wouldn’t immediately run away when her leg got free. That SOB was hard to tear off! The poor thing – it was really around her body tightly 🙁 Then I tore apart the paper bag until one of the handles came apart and she was finally free. The poor thing immediately curled up in the bed, nestling herself near two pillows.

She’s okay, but I am sure she has some scrapes because there was a small amount of blood on the sheet where she was while I was tearing all this stuff off of her. But I’m just going to let her have the bed for now and worry about changing and washing the sheets later. It’s barely anything, and nothing to worry about — I don’t want it to sound like it was a lot.

How she got herself into this, I’ll never know. But I’m relieved that she’s finally free. Poor kitty.