Halloween Hijinks

Snowball and friends.

Happy Halloween - we will be celebrating all week long so this is just the first in a series of Halloween postings. Back in 2008, before we had this blog and after we had just moved to our home now, Mom had an exciting adventure on Halloween.  She would like to tell you all about about it ....

On Halloween morning I went about feeding the kitties and getting ready to run some errands. We were invited to go Trick or Treating with a friends and their daughter. We planned to dress up in costume and make a special cake for Halloween. Just as I was about to leave the house for a few hours I checked on us cats one last time. We had converted an old workshop/carport into a indoor/screen porch cat shelter for the white kitties. It was still a work in process.

Norm cleaning on the top shelf.

When I went out to the screened porch I noticed some of the foam board  put in the ceiling for insulation was on the floor. I looked up and several little white kitty heads peered down at me from the rafters above!!!! They had gotten up into the ceiling from the various shelf perches we made for them. It was an old workshop so I did not know whether the cats had access to the outdoors from here. Not all of the cats were up there - Al and Snowball were not good climbers so they were still in the screen porch, watching all the commotion. I knew I had to get as many back down as I could before they could escape. So much for my day running errands! Those kitties always seem to pick days I have plans to get into mischief!

Al is not our best climber and a bit of a bully.

I stood up on one of the tables and pounded hard on the ceiling making a lot of noise and succeeded in getting a couple of cats down. I finally had to make a hole in the ceiling to see who was still up there. I had taken a head count but wasn't sure. I pulled the foam board loose and saw Smidge and Lily still up above me. I sprinkled tuna and catnip on the table under one of the ceiling holes and Smidge and Lily were just about to come down when Al, my blue eyed deaf cat, went after gray tabby cat Tabitha. All the screeching and commotion scared the cats back up above! I finally put everyone else inside. 

Smidge, not sure she wants to come down.

With my walking stick I coaxed Smidge down a hole to the porch. I put her inside and tried to get Lily to come down too. No way -- she was not moving - tucked away in the far corner of the ceiling.All this had taken me a couple of hours. I still had a cake to bake and costumes to make.

I gave up for now on Lily. I left two holes open and food out. I went out for a couple of hours to run errands and finally when I came back she had come down to eat. I picked her up and put her in a kennel cage while we fixed the ceiling. We secured the smaller foam boards with tape and nailed the larger pieces back - I had made a mess of it all trying to get up there. This time it would hold so we let the cats back out.

Lily, safely down from the rafters.

We were running late but still able to make our date or so we thought.....Don and I dressed in our costumes, got the cake ready and headed for the car before realized we forgot something...the house key. We had locked ourselves out!

With the cats all watching (and probably laughing at us) from inside the house and the screen cat porch, Don removed the heavy air conditioner from the window so I could climb in, carefully blocking the open window so no cats would jump out - thank goodness we had left the A/C in this long or we would not have been able to get back inside.  I closed the window from inside and unlocked the door, taking the keys with me this time.


We made it to our date with friends - a little late, disheveled and dirty but then we went  as Zombies so that was OK! 

Hope you enjoyed Mom's funny Halloween tale - more to come each day this week - some funny, some scary and some haunting! Romeo the Cat is posting about Black cats all week so do go by!

Mom's hosting a Give-away on her other blog to celebrate 150 followers -so do stop by and visit. Go to Carolina Mountains and Give-away page.