Cats 2, Bathroom Doors 0
July 29, 2011
You would think we would have learned our lesson seven years ago when our brand new tiny male kitten locked himself in the bathroom. We didn’t. You see we have this problem with one of our downstairs bathrooms. The door opens inward and right next to the door are the drawers for the bathroom vanity. If the one of the drawers is left open the door can’t swing open. I know what you are thinking, but the yes the hardware is also on the inside of the door, so you can’t just de-hinge the danged thing to get in, either. Someone must have really treasured their privacy when they built that one. Even if you remove the door knob you still can’t get in. Anyway, it’s not usually a problem. If you are inside the bathroom and you open the drawers you can obviously close them again when you want to get out. Even I can eventually figure that one out. If you are outside the door – well then you can’t open the drawers so there is no problem, right? Except when cats are involved. Seven years ago, we put our small male kitten Max in the bathroom for “time out.” Can’t remember why anymore. Must have been for a good reason. He was frequently getting into trouble (see piano anecdote below). But when it was time to “free” him, we discovered that in his “cleverness” he had managed to pull out one of the vanity drawers and we couldn’t get the door open. Of course, the bathroom window was closed and after fussing and fussing and fussing with the door, the only option was to get the jig saw from the basement and cut a hole in the door large enough to reach through and close the drawer in order to open the door and let the cat out. To this day, Max heads for the hills when a power tool is branished. Cat 1, Bathroom Door 0. As I mentioned, this wasn’t the only time said young cat got himself “stuck” in his early years. He once was “sliding” across the top of our baby grand piano and he got his paw jammed into the music rack. Fortunately we did not have use the jig saw that time. Eventually the “bathroom door incident” faded into family lore and we stopped boring our friends with the tale of how Max Cat locked himself in the bathroom and we had to use a power tool to get him out. Also, after six years, we finally hired a contractor to fix the bathroom door. We have one of those houses where a “handy guy” once built everything and nothing is of standard “dimension.” So it wasn’t just as simple as going down to the hardware store, buying a new door and screwing it into the frame. Nothing in our house is simple like that! Anyway, we kinda looked at the “cat in the locked bathroom” as one of those lightning strikes once, never again, situations I guess. But it did. We brought home a young female kitten from the Animal Shelter a couple of weeks ago. We made the “mistake” of visiting the shelter and – well – let’s just say we were lucky we didn’t adopt all the animals there. The new kitten was having a little trouble “adjusting” to her new litter box, so she got to spend a fair amount of time in the bathroom for the first few days in order to keep her from leaving presents on the carpet (or on any towel or blanket she finds on the floor). To our surprise, she also found a way to pull out one of the vanity drawers. But this time we were prepared. We ALWAYS leave the bathroom window open! It was closed. Liam had closed it the day before. Go figure. Well, I tried seven ways to Sunday to jimmy the door open, using everything from tiny screw drivers to butter knives but with no luck. Finally, the jig saw had to come out again and now our “new” bathroom door now has a lovely hole in where the door knob used to be. We have now learned to never ever-ever-ever put a kitten in that bathroom again for time out. At least until we forget again six or seven years from now. In the meantime, though, we are making sure the new kitten, named Maisy, doesn’t get anywhere near the piano.
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