Indiana Jones & the Little Gray Ball of Fur: Part IV

Once inside, it wasn't so bad. I had to keep crouched down so my head wouldn't hit the low ceiling. I neither saw nor felt any spiders or mice running over my feet.

"Here kitty kitty kitty! Here kittykittykittykitty!" This is something I often hear my neighbors do in the evening. I always thought they sounded stupid, but I figured just then that it must work if they kept on doing it every night to get their kitties to come home.

"Meow!"

Brilliant. The meow was louder this time, which meant it was closer. I shined a flashlight around and finally spotted it above my head about 2-3 feet away, perched on top of a foam mat about 3-4 feet above the ground. It was the cutest little gray ball of fur I had ever laid eyes on. I guessed that it was no more than a few weeks old, though I really have no idea how to gauge the age of animals. Its glowing hazel eyes were staring back at me. We started meowing at each other again, but it wouldn't come forward.

"Just grab it!"

"Hold on Abba, let me try this." I continued to try to coax it forward by kitten-speak.

"Just grab it, you've got gloves on!"

I ignored my dad and continued meowing and calling, getting slowly closer to it. It was clear to me, by this time, that the reason why it was not coming forth was because it was afraid of heights. As young as it was, it had yet to learn the law of nature that all cats land on their feet, and so though somehow it had managed to climb up, down was another story. One story up feels like 5 stories down, one could say. I wanted to minimize its fright by meowing rather than grabbing.

"Quit that meowing business and just grab the damn thing!"

Sigh. There goes the infamous Chung family temper. And who was the one who had the balls to actually go in and get the damn thing in the first place? Didn't I at least deserve patience from those who remained outside? Alas, patience is not a Chung family virtue. For the sake of keeping my dad quiet, I decided to try to grab it, but slowly. I approached slowly, until I could reach out and touch it with my fingers. I let it sniff my gloved fingertips, and I was overcome with kitten-love as it ran its soft little nose around them.

"Hurry up and grab it and bring it out!"

Sigh. Spell was broken. I looked around and spotted another foam mat lying on the ground. I took it and lifted it slowly up to the level of the kitten, and the kitten hesitated, then deciding it was safe, stepped gingerly onto the mat until all four little white paws were standing on it. Success! It was just like the scene in La Vita e Bella, where Roberto Benigni's character unrolls a red carpet fit for a queen over the rainy ground so that his "princess" wouldn't have to get her feet wet. Or like that scene in Mary Poppins where Mary and Bert are taking a romantic stroll through the chalk painting and Bert gets the turtles to give them a ride over the river. Anyway, I crept back toward the opening with the mat with the cat on top, dad yelling all the while from the garage: "it's gonna run away again, just grab it like I said, just do it!"

Finally, I reached the opening, set the mat down, and grabbed the damn thing and set it onto the garage floor. It promptly ran off to hide behind family artifacts that have amassed in the garage over the years. The next few minutes was spent chasing and yelling and ignoring yells, then finally getting a hold of the little gray-white furball and snapping dozens of pictures of it, laughing and cooing and creating a makeshift home for it, then snapping more pictures. I'm going to be a terribly obsessed mother, I can tell already, recording every minute of my baby's life with a camera. Thank god for digital cameras! Remember all those bad pictures of the ceiling or a close-up of someone's knee that we were forced to pay for and get printed? Digital photography is a godsend.

The next day, during the sailing trip across the Sound, I found myself showing these pictures to my sailing companions/cat-lover friends Becky and Sarah, and relating the tale of the rescue to them, including the part where I felt like Indiana Jones on a dangerous mission.

"So what's going to happen to Indie?" Sarah asked later on.

Indie? Oh the kitten! What a perfect name. And so goes the story of Indie.

The day spent sailing ended with dinner at Luau, a Polynesian restaurant near Becky's new apartment in Greenlake, and then a ride down Greenlake Way during sunset, which was pure magic.