The Story That Proves Cats Truly Are Mystical Creatures
The story of how a Houdini-like cat somehow kept getting stuck below the floorboards and yet nobody could work out how
When it comes to cats and their ability to squeeze into spaces so small that it defies belief, even Einstein himself would have to admit that the only explanation could be some mystical powers.
During my years volunteering for an animal fostering charity, I saw evidence of these powers in use many times. From the full-grown cat that hid behind a DVD player in the TV cabinet, a space so small that logically speaking you would think a hamster would have struggled to fit into it; to the cat that somehow squeezed under a fence which had a clearance level of just a few inches.
One story especially stood out, it was told to me by a fellow volunteer at the charity, and no story I have ever heard better encapsulates the true mystical powers of cats to get into places that they never should be able to than this one.
The cat’s name was Snowdrop, and the volunteer who was looking after her was called Nicole. One day Nicole came home, and to her horror found that Snowdrop was not there. She searched the entire house for him, every possible hiding place she could think of. There was not a sign of him.
Her first thought was that he must have somehow managed to sneak out, and so she along with several other volunteers, myself included, started a local search to see if we could find him. We could not.
A week passed by, no sight nor sign of him. But we are still hopeful he might turn up. Despite this, Nicole took in another foster cat to look after, his name was Tibbs. Nicole sits down in the living room one evening to watch Coronation Street when Tibbs starts meowing — he wanted some attention. But, just as Nicole was about to give him that attention, she hears something. A faint meow.
It had not come from Tibbs, so where had it come from? Tibbs again meows, clearly annoyed that he is not getting the attention he was expecting. A faint meow comes in response. But where is it coming from? Beneath the floorboards. That’s where!
Frantically, Nicole pulls up her carpet, then using the torch on her phone she peers through the gap in the floorboards, and lo and behold who does she see. Snowdrop. Immediately, she gets out a hammer, pulls up the floorboards and rescues him. Thankfully, despite his ordeal, he seems okay.
But now the question needs to be answered, how the heck had he got beneath the floorboards? Nicole searches the entire house looking for any sign or hint of a possible route that could have led him to somehow get beneath the floorboards.
She finds nothing.
Worried that the same thing could happen again, she calls over her friends who help her search for a route beneath the floorboards.
They find nothing.
Eventually, she calls out a builder who searches the house looking for any possible routes that could lead beneath the floorboards. The builder finds a possible route, it seems impossible, but it is the only opening anywhere in the entire house that leads to beneath the floorboards. It is the gap in the wall through which the piping from the central heating runs through. It seems impossible that Snowdrop could have used it, the builder covers it up anyway.
Several weeks pass by without incident, all was looking good. But then one day Nicole comes home, and guess what, Snowdrop is nowhere to be seen. And guess where he is found again, beneath the floorboards. History then repeats itself, she searches the house looking for how he could have got down there, she calls in her friends to do the same, she calls in a builder. But all her actions prove fruitless. Nobody can work out how Snowdrop has managed it.
Because of this, Nicole decides to set up some CCTV cameras around the house. Several more weeks passed by before it happened again. After rescuing him, she studies the CCTV cameras. The last sighting of Snowdrop was in the kitchen, he had snuck into the pantry.
Determined to once and for all get to the bottom of this, she opens up the pantry — it is full of tins of cat food and much more. Painstakingly she removes all of these and empties the pantry into the kitchen.
She notes that some pipes run through the floor, but the floor solidly wraps around those pipes. The pipes were quite thin as well, no more than about 4/5 inches in width. There seemed no way that the pipes could have played any part in Snowdrop’s escapades. Perplexed, she once again goes and studies the CCTV footage. She learns nothing new.
Desperate for answers not least for her sanity, she calls in the builder again. It turns out that the pipes are not in use, they are old ventilation pipes which for some reason had never been taken out.
He takes them out and finds that they lead beneath the floorboards — the part of the pipe which had led to the outside had been taken out, meaning the pipes led beneath the floorboards like a tunnel. The question was if Snowdrop had used the pipes, how had he gotten into them?
The only way in that anyone could find was a gap in the wall around the pipes — which, though it circled the pipe, provided no more than an inch in clearance.
So, just to put things into perspective here, the only explanation that they could find was that Snowdrop, a fully grown cat, must have somehow squeezed through the gap that surrounded the pipes to get behind the kitchen wall, which had a clearance of no more than an inch, then once behind the kitchen wall, to reach beneath the floorboards, he must have clawed his way through a pipe that was no more than 4/5 inches in width. Exactly, impossible.
That means as far as I’m concerned, Snowdrop was and is a magical cat and that was how he did it. There is no other explanation. Not even Houdini could make a claim to fame as good as this. But then, that is why cats are cats and humans are not.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:
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