RUSH: I was just telling Mr. Snerdley I woke today to a crisis. You know, I cannot sleep with my cochlear implant on, ’cause it won’t stay on. So I sleep entirely deaf with a series of alarms and lights and so forth should something necessitate — (interruption) well, it’s where I’m going. The cat supposedly helps out. The cat just wants to be fed. That’s fine, that’s cool. Still a little kitten, what, about four months now, five months. Anyway, the routine is, all I have to do is sit up and the cat is right there, no matter what, the cat is right there and demands to be fed, wants a little affection.

I sat up, no cat, no kitten. Uh-oh, something is weird.

Now, the cat had tried to wake me up 5 a.m. This is about I guess seven, 7:30. So I’m looking around, there’s no place to go. There’s no place to hide. All the tunnels have been blocked off. All of the things that would allow her to get into crawl spaces and vents, they’ve all been blocked off. There’s no way she gets out. I thought, “Okay, did I sleepwalk?” Did I open a cabinet in the bathroom that she then went in and I closed? I started opening every cabinet door. I looked under the bed. I looked under the sofa. I looked everywhere I could think of. I went into my closet. She’s got a little place in a nook window there that she likes to sit behind one of the curtains. I looked there.

Nothing. No cat anywhere.

I went and opened a can of food, walked around the room “Here, Allie, come here.” No cat. Well, maybe while I was asleep somebody came in and got the cat, took it down to see the dogs. The dogs are coming home this morning from being away at The Fur Seasons. So, I said, “Okay, there’s gotta be some explanation for this. I mean, there’s no place for it to go.”

So I jumped in the shower and I started getting ready, and normally the shower attracts the cat. This cat gets in the shower with me. She will walk in the shower, will not get wet — it’s a big shower — and climbs up on the bench that’s in there. It’s steam, too, so there’s a place to sit. Anyway, none of that. (interruption) Oh, yeah, she gets the paws wet. The shower still drips and she is mesmerized by that, looks up like a turkey does when it rains. The water hits her on the head and she shakes her head trying to figure it all out. It’s funny. I mean, these are just lovable, funny things.

Anyway, nothing that attracts the cat attracted the cat. But I’m still not panicking. There’s no place for the thing to be. Somebody had to come in there and get it while I was asleep. Kathryn had to come in and say hello to it or whatever. So the last thing I did, as always, I put my implant on as I’m getting ready to walk out the door. I unhooked the phone from the charger and the iPad Mini with Retina display from the charger and the iPad Air from the charger and the second iPhone from the charger, everything, ready to go out the door.

And then I hear her meowing. I said, “Oh-oh.” ‘Cause it sounded like a panic meow.

I realized she’d been meowing the whole time but I haven’t been able to hear it because I haven’t had my implant in. So I start searching anew. I look around and I can’t find the cat anywhere. I look under the bed again. I start retracing steps. I open every cabinet I’ve previously opened. You’ve been through this.
You know how this works. Every place that you look, you look again. I can hear the cat. The cat’s somewhere. There’s nowhere to hide.

So finally I walked to the doors that lead out to the patio, just to get a wide angle view of the room, and, lo and behold, on top of the canopy on the bed. Now, before you people start ripping into me for being out of touch for having a bed canopy, the bed canopy is there to stop the air-conditioning from giving us a cold every night. It deflects the air. I don’t have a canopy there because we think — it’s a functional thing. Anyway, the cat’s up on top of it and afraid to jump down.

So I’m saying, “Come on, Allie, come here.” (making meowing sounds)

She’s looking at me and crying. “Come on, just jump! I don’t want to have to go get a ladder. Just jump! It’s not that far to the bed.” No, she just kept prowling around. I didn’t even stop to think, “How did she get up there?” She had to climb the walls. She had to climb the walls to get up there. So, anyway, I had to go get a ladder, get the cat down. And there was no appreciation. She just ran straight to the food bowl and sat there and kept meowing, “Okay, where’s breakfast?”

I just love these things, though. I mean, it’s an adventure. (laughing) This cat’s got more personality than any cat I’ve ever had. I’ve only had three so it’s not a big universe to choose from. So, anyway, that’s that. It’s always a great sense of relief, ’cause it was inexplicable. I can’t tell direction of sound. I have no spatial recognition. So I could hear the meow, but it didn’t sound like it was above or below. It was just somewhere. So she’s up there on the canopy looking at me like I’m the idiot. And probably was.