Sarge's Little Adventure

Yesterday morning I was on my way to Kabira to internet and Bea followed me up to the car. “Where’s Sarge?” I said and Bea ran over to the wall running along the edge of our property. I heard a meow from the other side. There’s a small grate near the bottom corner and I looked through this and there was Sarge, on the wrong side, seemingly stuck. “Come back the way you came,” I told her and took off. I figured she needed to figure this one out for herself.



I came back a couple hours later and there was no sign of Sarge, no meowing from the other side of the wall, so I went inside and did some work. Bea slept on the desk next to me and we whiled away the afternoon. Around 4:00 PM it seemed strange that we hadn’t seen Sarge all day, so Bea and I went back to the wall and called for her. After a few minutes I heard Sarge’s meow. Bea pawed at the grate and said, “Meow,” very concerned and I was like, “Dude, I know,” and Bea was like, “Meow,” and I was like, “I’m on it.”



I walked around to our front gate and out to the road. A man sat outside the house next door. I explained the situation.

“You think you have a cat inside?”
“I know I have a cat inside. I saw her.”
“And you want to go inside?”
“Yes, please.”
“Oh, yes! I saw a cat this morning. The dog was chasing the cat.”
“You have a dog?”
“Yes, the dog chased the cat. It was very funny. They run, run, run.”
“You have a dog?”
“But the dog could not catch your cat.”
“Can I just pop inside and get her?”
“It is a white cat?”
“Yes. I know she’s in there. If I could just go get her…”
“And you want to go inside?” He thought about this. “Yes, the dog was chasing the cat this morning. What do you think? She wants to go inside.”
I turned and there was another man standing across the street. He considered me. “There is a cat?”
“Yes, my cat has been stuck in there all day. She doesn’t know how to get out.”
He sort of shrugged. I looked back to the first man.
“So you want to go inside,” he said, again. He grinned at me.
“Please?”
“Let me go inside and see if she is really there.”
I waited outside the gate. He came back.
“The cat is really there!” He sounded surprised.

I walked down to the very bottom of the yard where Sarge cowered in the drainage grate. She was covered in dirt and burrs and spotted with some sort of yellow substance that I hoped wasn’t pee. I picked her up and held on tight. The man escorted us out and Sarge was terrified of him. She was also scared of the cars that passed as we headed down the road back to our place. She scratched and clawed and left me covered in muddy paw prints. But then there was Bea waiting in the yard for us and everyone calmed down. “Meow,” Bea said and I was like, “Tell me about it.” Then I locked Sarge in the house while Bea licked her back to health and that night they both slept like kittens.