Linus and Grover’s story. (Part 2)
posted in Cat Stories |Having rescued Grover from the fridge and placed her safely in her basket, we turned our attentions to Linus. Peering down the hole with a torch, gave no indication of where he might be, other than under the kitchen units which we already knew. We tried calling and coaxing but no success. At one point I found myself lying face down on the floor with my arm fully stretched down the hole, right up to my shoulder, waving a piece of fresh fish, but not even this moved him. He must have been terrified, not to mention freezing cold.
We then decided to leave him in peace, and so putting some food near the hole we closed the kitchen door, had our tea, had a bath, watched a film and tried to reassure Grover, who was still in her basket. We returned to the kitchen later only to find the food had not been touched.
That’s how we found ourselves at 10pm one cold December night getting the tool box out and removing the front of the kitchen units at ground level. This plan would un-doubtedly have worked except for the fact that unbeknown to us there was a hole in the floorboards and we were just in time to see Linus disappear down it into the foundations of the house. I thought I was upset before, but now I was really worried.
The access to the foundations was through a trap door under the mat-well in the hall. The space beneath the house was about 3 feet high, littered with building debris and festooned with wires and electric cables. Peter is scared of confined spaces, and not really built for such exploits and so it fell to me to search for a scared black kitten in a vast pitch black space.
Dressed in my gardening anorak, a woolly hat to keep the spiders out of my hair, and armed with 2 torches, just in case one went out, I set off on what seemed like an impossible mission. It was really scarey. Peter was talking to me all the time through the trap door, so I could keep my bearings, the woolly hat kept slipping over my eyes, and there was no sign of Linus. Even if I did find him, he was hardly going to come running to me was he, to him I was the enemy not his saviour.
After what seemed like an age of crawling around I saw his eyes shining in the light of one of the torches. I’m not really sure what happend next, and to this day I still can’t believe how lucky I was, but suffice to say he made a dash passed me heading for another hole and I managed to grab hold of his back leg. He bit me, but I hung on.
Now I had another problem.
A struggling kitten, 2 torches and a woolly hat, but only one pair of hands. Somehow I managed to crawl back to the trap door with Linus grasped tightly in one hand and a torch in the other. I rose from the trap door holding him aloft like the lady of the lake holding Excalibur. Peter took Linus and re-united him with his sister in the sitting room. I thought he’d then come back for me, but he left me standing in the hole, so I went back to retrieve my other torch.
The following day things were much calmer, though now Grover was limping with her front left paw. By the next day she wasn’t limping at all! My little finger swelled to twice its size where Linus had bitten me, but fortunately soon got better after that.
It took several days to gain their trust, but we did and we couldn’t have wished for two better cats. Despite our rocky start, Linus was always loving and gentle. Grover was affectionate but slightly more aloof.
Sadly Linus died in August 2005 following a 3 year battle with leukaemia. Grover died from kidney failure in January 2006.
