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| One of her more favorite, inconvenient for me, hangouts |
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| Raccoon, a gift from KMac, is her favorite toy. |
When I first moved in here she was terrified of the terrace and would hide under the couch whenever I opened the door. I wish we could go back to those days. The last few months she wakes me up before I'm ready to be awake and immediately runs for the top step to yowl her displeasure until I open the terrace door to let her out. When she first started going out I thought maybe I should finally get a collar for her or get a kitty leash (my vet does sell them) but people told me I was being ridiculous. Even my friend and fellow cat owner who used to live in this apartment scoffed at me. Her cat Jimmy escaped from the terrace once or twice and ended up on a neighboring terrace only to be put out on the street by those people.
Sigh, if only that's all that happened to Sherlock.
Tuesday night Sherlock and I were enjoying sunset on the terrace. While I was using Twitter to make everyone jealous of my drinking wine while watching the sun set behind the iconic Sultanahmet, Sherlock was prowling along the narrow ledge of my neighbor's sun room. I hate it when she does that. A while later I noticed I hadn't seen her in a while and began calling. Usually if I call enough she'll find me to see what I want and why I'm interrupting her fun. Even when I'm inside and she's on the terrace she runs down the stairs every half hour or so to check in. I called and called. No Sherlock. My friends told me to stop being silly, that she'd fallen asleep on the other side of the sun room or was messing with me and she'd come home. So despite the threat of rain I left the terrace door open that night, hoping she would wake me up in the middle of the night walking on my head the way she does.
No such luck.
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| The box KMac shipped it in is her 2nd favorite |
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| What's in there and why can't I catch it?! |
I woke up before 6 AM Wednesday to still no Sherlock. I searched the terrace again and trudged down the five flights of stairs to search the streets. Nothing. I had to get ready for my first day of a new Turkish class but when I got back that afternoon I searched the streets some more with equally bad luck. Back up on the terrace I noticed the older woman on the terrace over and down (mine's the highest building on the block) was on her terrace so I called down to ask if she'd seen a small black and brown cat.
She had in fact. She said she saw a cat walking along the small ledge of the sun room and then jump down. And then a lot of words I didn't understand accompanied by pointed at what looked to be a hole that her building had been built around and was badly covered with chicken wire.
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| Her new favorite hangout |
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| The toys she brings to play with in bed while I'm trying to sleep |
I got my downstairs neighbor and we went next door to talk to the woman. There were just too many words I didn't know coming out of her so I needed the help. She took us to the building basement where, if Sherlock really had fallen, is where she'd likely end up. We searched the shaft and the basement but neither saw nor heard her. It didn't surprise me though because I figured if she were ok that all the voices would scare her too much into to responding. I couldn't get the old woman to stop talking though so we left empty handed. My neighbor helped me do another street search and talk to the local cat lady who takes care of the street cats and some of the guys who hang out in the nearby tea house. Thursday I expanded my search of the streets wandering farther around the neighborhood stopping to ask in at restaurants and tea houses where I basically got the same response to my 'have you seen my cat' question. And that was that there are a lot of cats around here.
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| A closed terrace door will not deter her |
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| Just hanging out, planning evil |
Friday I checked the streets again on my way to/from class. While waiting for my neighbor to come home (so I could drag her next door to check that basement again) I heard a very loud yowling in the stairwell. That turned out to be my neighbors giant ginger cat which had somehow got out. I chased him down the lobby and hauled him back upstairs to her place. Something made me go back down though. I hadn't fully investigated my building's basement yet because it's kinda scary. Like a Michigan basement on a roid rage. And the lights don't work. I was pretty sure Pennywise was down there somewhere...
The older man on the first floor, who is basically a hobbit he's so short, heard me calling Sherlock's name and went into the basement with me. After a cursory check he declared her not there but I thought I heard a faint something. I called her name and once again heard a faint mewl. Through a bloody wall. She WAS in the neighbor basement. Luckily there already seemed to be a hole in the wall between the buildings and my hobbit neighbor helped remove the bars and plywood blocking the hole. Sherlock, being contrary, refused to come to me so I had to clamber through the wall. It looks my basement is on level with next door's first floor because coming out of the short tunnel into the air shaft I saw what looked to be another 8 to 10 foot drop below. Sherlock apparently hadn't fallen the entire way so it was no wonder we didn't see her in the basement on Wednesday. I finally got hold of her and crawled back through the hole in the wall.
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| Gonna be a little while before she's let out again |
Other than being a little more clingy than usual and cuddling with me all night, Sherlock seems generally unharmed. I'm likely more traumatized than she is. I'll take her to the vet once this week's torrential rains cease just to make sure (and maybe to get her a flea dip) but within a few hours of being home she was already on the steps leading up to the terrace demanding to be let out. That is unlikely to happen for a little while.
So while Facebook jokes fly about Sherlock having seen so many movies and TV episodes starring her namesake that she felt compelled to go off on her own adventure (The Kitteh Waterfalls, The Case of the Missing Neighbor Cat, The Triumph of Sherlock Meows), I'm just happy she's home!
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| One happy kitteh mama |
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| One utterly unconcerned kitteh |
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