"There's nothing we can do. There's a hole in the garage that leads into the crawl space, but I boarded that up years ago to keep out the mice. Call Animal Control tomorrow, and they can take care of it."
"Why can't we just do it ourselves tonight? We can unboard the hole, and-"
"No, there's mice down there. Just call Animal Control tomorrow morning, and they'll find the best way to get the cat."
"Fine." I went upstairs to my room and tried to forget about the poor cat. Once again, it slipped out of my mind fairly easily, until my dad came in.
"I just thought of something: what if it dies in there tonight?" he said.
Yes, dad, what if?
"Let's just do it now."
Sweet, a cat rescue plan was about to be put into action! "I'm coming cat!" I called out. On my way down, I grabbed a bowl from the kitchen, poured some vanilla soy milk into it and headed into the garage, where Abba was unboarding the 2 x 1.5 foot hole with a hammer. Soon enough he was peeling off the board and I oohed and ahhed as I saw the underside of the house for the first time ever since we moved in 15 years ago. It was dark. We shined a flashlight into it and looked around for the cat. The floor of the crawl space was about 2 feet down from the garage floor and its ceiling was about 1.5 feet higher than the garage floor. There were foam mats scattered about in singles and piles, for some reason. We could have easily housed a midget in this room, it was big enough, as far as I could see. The cat was too far away from the opening to be seen, and our view was obstructed by boards and foam mats.
"Meow!" I cried, setting the bowl at the edge of the hole.
"Meow!" the cat responded. We got another lively conversation going, but it still would not budge from its distant perch even with the temptation of a bowl of vanilla-flavored soy milk. I took the bowl and was about to lay it inside the hole, closer to the cat, when my mom came in. Uh oh.
"What are you doing?? What is that?? What do you think you're doing? Does that look like a bowl for cats?? Are you crazy??" Etc. etc.
Sigh. "Please just stop yelling Umma, you're scaring the cat," I said. Is it any wonder I hate the Korean language? It's such a fighting language. In my defense, we have dozens and dozens of bowls in our house and in the garage- remnants of our old restaurants- so I had figured we could spare one little plain white bowl for a hungry stray kitten. How our values differ, Umma's and mine! Anyway, I resigned myself to waiting for Umma to take the bowl and replace it with an empty tofu box. In the meantime, Abba and I tried meowing the cat out again, but to no avail. Someone was going to have to go in there and manually grab it. The two of us peered into the dark abyss full of god knows what sorts of creatures worse than cats.
"Uhhh, I'm not going in there, I just showered," said my dad, man of the house.
"Uhhh, I'll get James," I said. I ran into the family room where James was working on his laptop.
"J, can you come here for a sec?" See, I knew it would be stupid to inform him of his task while he was still inside the house. I had to lure him into the garage, and then tell him what we wanted him to do. Here he came. Here he stood in front of the hole.
"NO! I'm not going in there!" said James, second man of the house.
Damn. Didn't work. Back inside the house with the phone in my hand, ready to call for help, I gave it a moment's thought, mulling over the idea of going in there myself. At first, my imagination was suffused with images of mice and spiders and other creepy crawlies. But then I had a sudden realization: this could be a chance to have my very own Indiana Jones type adventure! Did Indiana Jones cave in the face of snake pits and caves full of crawlers? No way! Would he ever surrender his responsibilities to Animal Control Services? Doubtful. Newly inspired by this heroic vision, I grabbed the hot pink rubber dishwashing gloves from the sink and marched determinedly back into the garage.
"I'm going in there myself!" I announced, snapping the gloves on like a surgeon preparing for battle in the OR. I put on a hoodie to shelter my head and arms from spiders and slipped into the foundation of the house with the tofu box full of faux-milk.
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