Drama Magnet

You know that saying, better have people think you are stupid than open your mouth and prove them right? Well in our case, it’s more like better have people wonder if you’re crazy than to phone them and prove them right.

I’m actually proper worried that Anna the translator thinks we are loony tunes at this point, and that nobody should be giving us another human life to look after. It’s just been odd situation after situation, which I admit, some of them are of our own doing, and then others are like what happened tonight. First randomly calling about Ukrainian saunas possibly being a code word intended for gay men or not, wanting to change apartments because neighbors either are constantly playing awful dance music and/or are having loud sex (maybe the AWOL nipple clamps belong to them?), then wondering if I could buy the lovely blanket from the landlady of the last apartment (my reasoning being that hey, if we’re out in the boonies at an orphanage like the last time, at least I want to know I’ll be able to have a decent sleep! Nothing weird about that IMHO, though Oisin says otherwise), and now a phone call about a cat down a supermarket heat duct. She’ll probably throw a party when we finally leave. I’m sure we’ll be a footnote in future stories of “goofiest couples I’ve ever helped adopt”.

We found a good pizza place that was actually pretty cheap, so we ate lunch there this afternoon to take a blissful break from eating various potato concoctions. (I love perogies, but there are only so many a person can eat in a month.) While we were there, we were able to call our good friend Emily who is looking after our cats while we are here, and because she also has an iPhone, we were able to do “Facetalk” over the magic of Wifi. Naturally, we got to see Peanut & Betsy in all their adorableness, and we did quite a bit of cooing and squealing at their cute little faces. Betsy knew my voice for certain and she was a bit confused because she made her famous little frown. Peanut was on Emily’s bed, relaxed and purring, I don’t think he reacted much when we tried to talk to him. It was so great to talk to Em, and it was good to see our fur babies so happy and well loved. When we hung up we were a bit verklempt over missing them, and before going home we decided to hit the supermarket to get some milk and bread for the next day.

As we were walking into the store, all of a sudden I heard loud, panicked meowing. I quickly glanced around alarmed, and found the source of the sound to be coming from a half-covered vent in the sidewalk that was against the building. I got down on my knees and tried to stick my head inside, and sure enough there was a little black kitten dropped about 10 feet below at the bottom of the vent, completely freaking out in amongst the dirty old cigarette butts and crap down there. Clearly, some asshole thought it was funny to drop a baby kitten in there for a lark, there’s no other way that a kitten could have just magically jumped or fallen down there on it’s own in the middle of a busy downtown area. I was in a right state- there was no way on earth we were going to walk by and let it die down there, and not tell anybody. Since nobody would understand what we were trying to say, the first thought was that I ran into the supermarket to grab a small box, then I got a big long roll of plastic bags from the fruit section, with the thought that I could knot them together, through the box, and lower it down there with a bit of food in it, hoping that the kitten would be hungry and would crawl in. Then we could cross our fingers and pray that it wouldn’t jump out before we could raise it back up to freedom. But but by the time I returned, I looked in the vent again and the kitten was gone. There was a metal box in the vent that led into the ventilation system, and it was the only place the kitten could have gone. We could hear it meowing so frantically, it made my guts go cold. There was no way for us to get it out, so we used the Bat Phone (the phone our agency gave us so they could contact us anytime) and we called Anna to see if she could translate to a store employee what was wrong with the kitten. When she answered, she was clearly exhausted from being in the region with another family who was visiting an orphanage, and could barely understand what I was trying to say about some supermarket vent and a cat. I had to repeat myself 3 times before she sort of understood what I was trying to say. Then I thrust the phone at a girl who was overseeing a delivery close by. She listened, spoke to Anna, and gave the phone back to me. Anna said that the girl was going to get somebody after the delivery. So we waited. I kind of thought that she wasn’t thrilled that these “American toooreests” were making such a fuss about a stupid cat. She went inside and came out with a wrench so we could take the industrial bolts off the awning thing over the vent so we could fully see inside without blockage. It was a space of about 2.5 feet by 5 feet, below a 10 foot drop. So Oisin climbed through and jumped down. We could still hear the kitten, but we couldn’t see it, yet when Ois made meowing noises the cat was answering back loud and obviously terrified. He got on the filthy ground and jammed his arm into the duct, but he just couldn’t reach the cat. And the cat was too afraid to come out. So he used his iPhone as a flashlight to try and see into the duct, and discovered that there was another drop inside the duct, and that was where the kitten was- and it was impossible to reach her.

The supermarket girl stood beside me looking down at Oisin, by now he had been down there for more than an hour. Still no kitten in grabbing distance. The girl had been chattering on the phone, and then she said to me, waving the phone, “811”. I assumed she was trying to say she had called some sort of emergency service. I went into the supermarket and bought some water to go with the tin of sardines we lowered in there, hoping to lure her out. Another half hour went by, and then suddenly a guy in a red suit appeared, and he spoke to the girl, and then he waved a van over with blue flashing lights. Help had arrived!

Half a dozen men in red suits came out of the van, with a ladder, flashlights, clipboards, etc. One of them went down to see if he could reach into the duct, to no avail. Then a couple other guys followed the girl into the store to see if they could reach the cat from the basement. They were gone for a good while, and we waited. One man spoke English, and asked if it was our cat, we said no, and he looked a bit puzzled as to why we were the cause of such a fuss over a cat, but he seemed nice enough. I called Anna again to find out what was going on by translating: she said that they needed to saw into the ventilation system to reach the kitten, but they couldn’t do it because the store manager wasn’t there to give permission. They disassembled it as much as they could and they could see the kitten inside but it was too scared to come closer with all of the commotion. There was nothing more anybody could do, but the man said that the next morning some sort of animal rescue people would come, with someone in particular that had experience with ventilation systems. I don’t know if he was serious or not- Oisin said he felt in his guts he was, and I would like to believe that, but I really don’t know. We stayed there for close to 3 hours and it was a sad, frustrating end. I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t anything more that could be done- it wasn’t fair to want to something so badly, and not have it turn out right. I am still worried that the kitten will die from exhaustion and dehydration before they’ll get it out, but there’s no point in going back there now because we don’t have the wrench to take the awning off even if the kitten came out of the silver duct and we could see it… which would feel even worse.

Now I’m going to be dreaming about stuck, terrified kittens all night, on top of everything else. Life would be so much easier if you just didn’t give a shit about anything or anyone else but yourself. There is nothing worse in the world than feeling completely powerless.