CAT IN THE SEWER

Cat in the Sewer

Our cat Lydia was a stay at home cat for a long, long time. When we would open the door, she’d just sit there in the living room or at the back door and sniff the air. Nothing more than that. She would just sniff until the door closed. She didn’t seem interested in going out at all.

All that changed about 5 months ago.

When my wife Linda opened the door one morning last fall, Lydia didn’t just sniff the air. She hopped up and walked straight out into it. Linda and I shouted for her to come back, but she wouldn’t.

What we were worried about was the wildlife in the neighborhood. You see, we live in a wooded area in Virginia, just south of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This place is crawling with deer and bear and coyotes and dogs. Now I’ve never seen any of the bears, but I’ve seen all of the other animals in the neighborhood – especially the dogs. It’s like everybody in the area is afraid of the bears and coyotes and deer, so they keep dogs around — big, mean, barking, cat-eating dogs.

And when Lydia ran out into the yard, we were afraid that some dog would chew her up.

It didn’t happen of course. About 15 minutes later, she came home and everything was fine. In fact, it was so fine we started letting her go out 3 or 4 times a day. She’d leave, sniff around, chase her tail and come back in about 5 minutes. No worries.

No worries, of course, until last week Wednesday.

Linda let Lydia the cat out for her usual late evening romp, but she didn’t come back. An hour went by and then another.

My wife was sure something had happened to Lydia. I tried to re-assure her that the cat would come back. I told her in fact I would get up out of bed periodically during the night and check to see if she was at the backdoor scratching.

She wasn’t.

We waited for two more nights for the cat, and it looked like she was never coming back.

The cat was clearly gone for good.

I’m a guy, and I took this news with a shrug, but my wife? It about broke her heart. It was like her baby had disappeared into the darkness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And my wife blamed herself because she was the one who opened the door and let Lydia out that night when she disappeared.

Last Saturday, our daughter Lillian came over to do some laundry at our house because her washing machine was busted, and she walked in with a laundry basket full of dirty clothes. She set it down and said, “I just saw something weird a couple doors down. A woman was lying in the street next to the sewer grate. Another woman was sitting next to her. I’m going to see what’s going on.”

A woman lying in the street? Maybe this happens all the time in a city like Chicago where I grew up, but here in Lynchburg it doesn’t happen ever, so my wife followed Lillian out.

Took me a while to get to the street because I couldn’t find my shoes, but when I got to the sewer grate, one of the women was dropping cat treats from a back down into the sewer, and my wife Linda and Lillian were talking into it.

I couldn’t believe it.

Lydia the cat was down in the sewer, about 10 feet down, looking up out of the darkness and saying, “Meow… meow.”

I knew what I had to do. I tried to lift the sewer grate, but the thing wouldn’t budge. It must have weighed a 100 pounds. It just felt like it was bolted into place.

I turned to my wife and said, “Keep talking to Lydia, don’t let her slink deeper into the sewer. I’ll see if I can get somebody to help us get Lydia out of the sewer.”

I got back to the house and started calling.

Saturdays, Lynchburg is the sleepy southern town I imagined when I was a kid growing up in Chicago. I called Animal Rescue, and they were closed for the weekend. I called the water and sewage department and nobody was there, so left a voice message. I called the fire department, and they were only taking 911 calls related to houses and barns burning. Finally, I called the city police department, and the person who answered scratched his head and said, “Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.”

Shaking my head, I figured I better get back out to the street and the sewer, and tell my wife and daughter the bad news. There was no help for Lydia, no way to get her out of that sewer dungeon she was stuck in.

But as soon as I opened my front door and stepped outside, I saw a police car, and my wife and daughter were standing next to the sewer hole. I ran up to them and looked down into the hole. There was a woman police officer climbing up out of the sewer with Lydia clawing into her shoulder like she was never going to let go.

What happened was that while I was wasting my time on the phone, Lillian called a friend of hers, a woman cop, and she came right over, and she and Lillian and Linda lifted the sewer grate that I couldn’t budge, and the police officer climbed down and got that silly cat.

I don’t know what the moral of this story is, but I do know that Lydia is never going outside again without a tight lease around her throat.