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6:44 p.m. - 2004-08-23 Pallet Cats I Have Known...Part VOk....this is the 5th and final installment in the pallet cat series. I want to thank Catinasnit for the nice animal prayer she sent me for poor old 4 way and other poor cats that don't have a regular home. This installation is about the cat that lived in the ceiling. We were getting along catless, except for the strays that would come and go, and all was quiet, when we heard the pitiful sound coming from the wall in Howard's office. "Mew..Mew...mwaaaaau.....mwaaaaau." The sound was ever so faint but we all definitely heard it. Then we heard a jumping and falling noise...jumping..scratching and falling over and over again and then more mewing. "Oh, that's just great" said Howard. "Now we have a cat stuck in this wall..how the hell did he get in there". We listened for a while and then the sound went away. I said, "well he either got out or he died." Howard just shook his head. over the next few days we would hear the mewing and jumping on and off. We didn't know if the cat was stuck there or not but preferred to get him out live rather than a stinking corpse. We discussed what to do and Howard said "I'd poke a hole in that wall, but I have no idea which joists he is in between." Now I have explained before that this place is dirty and very rough around the edges. It has a suspended ceiling and there are places where the tile is missing. As we discussed how we were going to get the cat out of the wall, we heard one more jumping noise and the mewing stopped. We continued our discussion when we heard another "MWAAAAAU". This time it came from the ceiling. We looked up and there out of a hole in the ceiling was a little skinny looking, dirty orange cat head, and it was a talkin. The minute we noticed him, he ran off. We could hear it galloping across the ceiling. For the next few days we would hear it in the wall, then in the ceiling and then it stopped going in the wall altogether and would just stay in the ceiling. It was living in its own little world up there apart from all the other ferral cats that were in between the pallets. When our Mexican crew would return to their stations after lunch, we discovered that the ceiling cat would jump down into the lunch room and gobble up all the scraps. Before anyone could catch it, the mangy thing would jump back into the ceiling. It wasn't long before the whole building started smelling like Cat Piss. It was kind of funny having a ceiling cat, and it was cute to see it poke its head out of the ceiling panels and mew at us and it would even come to the hole to mew if you called it first by mewing like a cat. However, the smell was getting ripe and after all this was an office. One day, Howard brought an animal cage trap to work. Not a trap that would hurt it, just one of those you use to relocate an animal. Harold, Dan and Larry the Love Muffin all took turns helping to get that trap up above the ceiling tiles. They were going to put it on a beam and place a taco inside of it and put the ceiling tile back on and just wait for the inevitable catterwauling that would ensue once Mr. Ceiling Cat was caught. I went to see how they were doing and there were these 3 grown men arguing about how to set this trap and above them, laying on a higher beam flicking his tail and watching the whole scene was Mr. Ceiling Cat. He was just out of their reach and there they were like Moe, Larry and Curly, messing with this trap. The minute they got the taco in place and the trap set, the ceiling cat got up and curtly walked away. He turned and mewed at them as if to say, "I aint getting in that thing, fool." The trap stayed empty all day with the taco in it. Right before going home, Howard removed the trap and I went into the room and looked up at the cat staring down at me. Then something quite out of the ordinary happened. Celing Cat, jumped down out of the ceiling, came right up to me, climbed up on my leg and said "Mew". He was so skinny and dirty and I felt so sorry for him. I fed him some of my leftover lunch and then he came into the office. He ran around and sniffed at every thing and looked at me again and mewed. In that mew I read, "OK...this will be my home now and you'll take care of me...right?" "Wrong"...Howard said I couldn't keep him and I knew he couldn't stay and continue to piss in the ceiling so I walked out the door into the lobby and the cat followed.....Then I walked outside and the cat followed. I quickly ran back in and closed the big glass door. The Ceiling Cat whirrled around and put his paws up against the glass and gave me the most pitiful look. He looked at me like I had betrayed him....and I did. I had to leave through another door because ceiling cat wasn't going to give up that easily. I cried all the way home. In the morning, he was no where to be found. We never saw him again. Since that day, we have had a few ferral cats come by to live in the pallet city, and two delivered a load of kittens. The first litter got eaten by other ferral cats and all we found were 3 kitty heads on the shipping dock floor. The other litter has a happier ending though. There were four in the litter and they were mean. We trapped them one by one and our Driver, Mike who has a magic way with cats and three cats of his own, took each one home and tamed it and found homes for all four kitties. Today, all kitties are happy, snug, warm and fed and placed in good homes where they will live for the rest of their lives. This is our only happy ending as far as cats go. I explained how Pooh Bear came to stay with us. Pooh Bear was not behaving himself at home and the last two things he did to wear out his welcome was get mad at Dan for not letting him out and peed in Dan's bed and then he massacred a bunch of baby bunnies in the back yard and after picking up bunny heads, Dan didn't feel bad at all about bringing Pooh Bear to be our mouser. Pooh Bear's days may be numbered though....this little cat...only 8 months old and still small, is a pistol. He disappears most of the day and manages to come back in time to be let in for the night and get fed. That would be fine with us, except that he has relieved himself on the office floor...both #1 and #2 and Larry the Love Muffin is getting tired of cleaning it up. We have now banished him to the back room. As of this writing, Pooh Bear did not come back in time and we had to lock up and leave him outside. Hope he survives the night outside. This is why I do not want anymore work cats. It is too heartbreaking. My plea to anyone out there who has an un-neutered cat....please get it fixed...the plight of ferral cats is saddening and kittens are very very hard to place. God bless the people who will take in all they can find. It is not that my heart isn't in it....but I have a responsibility to keep my own pet healthy and happy and she just doesn't do well around other animals and is epileptic and I don't want her catching any diseases from ferral cats. If I ever have the little old house in the country with lots of land....all the little misfit animals can come live with me. Outside of course...I don't want to turn into one of those little old "cat" ladies that you hear about on the news. Nite Y'all....P. I. Yarnsmith.
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