The Black Hole

My friend Stacer cracked me up with a blurb over at her blog about finding stuff under her washing machine. Apparently, her cats have been "losing" stuff (including: 5 ponytail holders, 3 milk top tabs, and 3 catnip-stuffed mice. Brought back some fond memories of my high school days.

When I was in high school, we had an Orange Marmalade cat named Bridget. This was in the day when you still used a "church key" to open beer bottles and most soda bottles. Shortly after we got her, we gave her a bottle cap to play with. Mostly, she kept it in the kitchen, where she could bat it around the floor. One day, it wound up underneath the refrigerator, and she came and fussed at me to fish it out for her.

For the rest of her time with us, the refrigerator was The Repository Of All Things Lost. No matter what it was, no matter where she lost it, she'd head for the refrigerator and try to fish it out. Really comical.

My sister has two cats, Bailey and George (and she swears their names have nothing to do with Jimmy Stewart's famous movie. George is full of mischief, but if you look into Bailey's eyes, there's just nothing there.

Anyway, they had quite a few milk tops and such which eventually wound up in the first floor entryway. There's a closet down there that has almost ½" of clearance. Every day, I'd go down, open the closet, and sweep all their "stuff" back out onto the floor for them to play with. Like Bridget, when they ran out of toys, they'd hang around the closet, waiting for me to retrieve their toys.

One of the reasons I always referred to Mauki as The Smartest Cat In The World was because he didn't fall into that trap. His favorite toy in all the world was "Paper" -- the foil inner wrapping from a Hershey Bar. I think the main reason he liked it was because it was shiny and sparkled when he batted it around.

One day, he got it wedged somewhere where he couldn't retrieve it. He came over and fussed at me, somehow getting the idea across that he had lost "Paper". "Well, show Daddy where it is", I told him. He got up, walked over to where he had lost "Paper" and stood there like a dog on point, looking at his lost toy. I got down and fished it out for him and set it in front of him so he could play with it some more. Nothing doing. Daddy had to make it go again. So I flicked it across the floor and he chased after it, having the time of his life.

After that, whenever he lost "Paper", he'd come tell me and I'd let him show me where it was so I could fish it out for him. The original one got completely lost one day, and we never did find it. Even when we moved out of that apartment and thoroughly cleaned the place, I never saw it again. I guess it fell into a Black Hole somewhere, along with all those odd socks and all that missing airline luggage.