A Cat-astrophe!

This morning, Steven and I nearly missed church due to feline intervention.

Karen left early to church for bell choir practice. After a 45 minute nap, Steven woke up. I changed him, fed him, and checked his diaper to see if it needed to be changed (it didn’t). With only 15 minutes until church started, and a ten minute trip ahead of us, I then picked Steven up and picked up the diaper bag, and opened the door to the garage. As I tried to step out into the garage, I nearly stepped on a cat.

Knute has been taking advantage of the open garage door lately when we are distracted by Steven.

“Great. Just great,” I said as a turned on the garage light. There, running into the third stall, was a gray tabby. I opted not to open the garage door to keep him in the garage, but left the door to the house open so he could (hopefully) run back inside. I loaded Steven into his car seat, and carefully arranged his toys while I mentally prepared to go wrangle the cat.

Once done, I checked the vehicle, and made sure there was no cat inside. Then I checked underneath, and no cat there, either. I scanned the garage quickly, and again, no cat. So I scoured the garage. No cat.

Thinking I was mighty lucky that the cat chose to come inside by himself, I went into the house. Good idea.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen I could see two nearly identical cats, face-to-face in the family room (I wish I had a picture). One was obviously Knute, and the other I will refer to as Canute.

Canute hissed at Knute, then ran into the sun room under the futon. Knute, curious as ever, followed. Canute then starting hissing again, so I grabbed Knute, who had stopped short of the futon and locked him in the half-bath. I went back to the futon, and Canute was still there. As I went to grab him, he raced past me, through the kitchen and into the dining room. I quickly followed, then ran after him into the living room. We rounded the coffee table and a chair, then into the foyer. Finally, he ran through the mud room into the garage, with me close on his tail.

Will the real Knute please stand up?

I closed the door to the house and opened the garage door, through which Canute finally made his escape. I went back into the house, freed the sequestered cat, and gave him a handful of food to draw him to me. I then checked him over stem to stern, reasonable certain it was truly Knute.

I went back into the garage, where Steven had been sitting in the car the entire time, and saw Canute slowly walking across the street into the neighbor’s yard. After triple checking the garage and driveway for other creatures, we set out for church, barely arriving before the opening hymn.

After church, the cat was lazily lying in his second favorite perch. He has been checked over carefully again by both Karen and me, and we are reasonably certain it is Knute, and not Canute.