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Just a few weeks after Barney moved in, he snuck out the back sliding
door one afternoon. I opened the door and followed him out, trying to
circle in front of him to corral him back to the door. Instead he
'outfoxed' me, looking in my eyes and outflanking my flanking
attempts. Our houses were still new, and there were not backyard
fences, so he moved along the house foundations across to the
neighboring lot. You could see he was nervous, with whiskers out and
ears slightly back, back and tail slouching moving only away, never
back toward the door. I reached under the neighbors overhang, a built
out portion of house a few inches off the ground and a perfect hiding
space. Barney pulled back, and continued forward, eventually hiding
under the neighbors small deck.
As I laid down to pull him out, he backed up inch by inch staying
just out of my grasp. I spoke to him softly, "oh, Barney, I am
the human. Come out now." But he instinctively kept just out of
my finally maximized reach. So I stood up, and looked about, then
walked back to the kitchen and grasped a simple metal bowl on the
table, returned to the neighbors yard and filled it from the garden
spigot. Setting over the deck, I poured first a little, then the
entire bowl through the slats, and Barney slowly brought himself to
the deck side, where I could reach him (but still underneath, cat
pride you know). The Colorado bentinite clay dust and the cold water
made for an orange-brown mess on the silky black cat. We put him in
the basement for a couple hours and he returned upstairs then, clean
and shiny.
He immediately sat on my lap and preened, letting me know that he
liked the deal he had going. It was the last time that he, upon
escaping, didn't stop and wait when we shouted. |
