What IS is with these felines???

Arrggh! What is WRONG WITH THESE CATS??? They are driving me insane! It's just one thing after another with them. Don't get me wrong, they are darlings and I love them. However...

It started with Toni, one of the barn cats, the other day. Toni is a sleek black beauty of a cat, very affectionate and charming, all pretty twinkling paws and beseeching eyes. On Wednesday, Mum and I were finishing up the barn chores; she was putting away the manure forks and wheelbarrow and I was brushing Max. Between rhythmic strokes of the brush and nervous foot movements from Sir Stamps-A-Lot, I kept hearing a faint mournful miaow.

"What is that noise?" I muttered, putting down the brush and calling for the cats, none of whom were in sight. "Keiki! Keiki!" I howled toward the rafters of the barn, hoping my voice would carry to the loft upstairs, where they usually could be found hiding. No grey-striped or black furry blobs came bounding down the stairs, as would have been their wont.

*Note: "keiki" is how I refer to a cat sometimes. It's a combination of the Hawaiian word for child, which is spelt that same way, and the term I used for cats when I was a little girl (pronounced kee'-kee).*

Mum came back inside the barn and I asked her if she'd heard the noise. We both listened, and there it came again: "Miaaoowww..."

"What IS that?" I exclaimed, and began a search for the elusive cats. I knew it had to be one of them. Mum looked in the stalls and I dashed upstairs. No cats to be found. When I returned downstairs, Mum had found the source of the noise: Toni.

Toni was trapped inside one of the sliding wooden doors. How she got in there, I will never know. By way of explanation, the doors there are long sheets of plywood with supporting beams; they're pressed up snugly next to the walls when opened, leaving about a handsbreadth of space between the door itself and the wall next to it. As I said, I have no earthly idea how Toni got in there.

But she did! And now we were stuck with the problem of getting her out. The miaows were starting to come louder now; she was really scared. Her little triangular black head popped through the opening where she had crawled in, then disappeared again.

"Well, she has to come out of there," Mum said decisively, "so we'll have to go up and get Mark." (He's the owner of the barn and all animal life pertaining thereto, except for Max and one other boarded horse.) "Do you want to go up to the house and get him or shall I? One of us has to watch the kids while he comes down here to get the cat out."

Bravely (?) I chose the lesser of two evils (or is that "weevils"?) and volunteered to stay with poor Toni. Mum drove up to the house to fetch Mark, and while she was gone, I determined to try my hand at getting the keiki out. Pouncing on the jar of cat treats, I fished one out and laid it on one of the supporting beams at the bottom of the door, just in front of poor Toni's little nose.

"Come on, keiki," I coaxed, pushing at the door to make room for her head to emerge. Not only did her head appear, but her whole upper body as well! Encouraged, I leaned with all my weight against the door, pushing it as far away from the wall as ever I could.

"Come on, baby," I said, "come on! You can make it!"

And she did! Totally ignoring the cat treat, she wriggled and squiggled her way out, just barely managing to drag her hindquarters out from behind the door. After squirming round for a few ticks, she jumped out seemingly unscathed.

"Toni!" I cried, beaming, and bent to gather her into my arms. Holding her, I proceeded to ring the house, using the barn 'phone, to tell them the good news.

Well! That little crisis was over. Toni lay purring in my embrace, relaxed and charming once more now that her ordeal was done.

That was Wednesday. This morning we had to capture Outlaw, our big strapping athletic Maine Coon cat, in order for him to make his veterinary appointment (it was very important for him to be present at this little shindig, you see). He begged off, but we insisted. Then he panicked. Oh, what utter joy.

He was hiding wedged in back of the ancient groaning freezers in the back room of the cellar (the last-ditch hiding place and refuge for all feline life in this household; it's kind of like what the catacombs were for the Christians in Rome. Get it? Catacombs? Er, sorry, guess I've been reading O'Brian, that famous pun-master, too much lately...if that is possible).

Anyway, Mum waited at the top of the cellar stairs with the opened cat carrier positioned just outside the cat-door (a small swinging plastic door fitted into the people-door). I scampered into the back room wearing my pyjamas (grey sweat shirt, red fleece trousers, and bright-pink socks, though you really didn't need to know that) and found Outlaw's glowing frightened eyes looking back at me from the tiny space in between the two freezers. Sighing, I headed back out to the main room of the cellar and grabbed the broom. I rattled it loudly in between the second freezer and the old space heater stored next to it, thinking that would drive him out. I was watching the freezers in front of me, sure that he would pop out momentarily; to my utter shock, he appeared from behind me, dashing around me and heading for the stairs at no uncertain gait. I dropped the broom and fled along behind him, hurdling laundry baskets as I went. I made to the bottom of the stairs just as he reached the top and found the door blocked by the cat carrier. Scrambling up as fast as my slippery pink socks would let me, I barred the way for him to go back down, though he looked as if he would have gladly died trying to fling himself off the top step to get away from me. I tackled him and held him firmly behind the front legs, trying to shove him through the cat-door.

"Mum!" I bellowed a moment later. "It's stuck! I can't get him through!"

"OK, OK, wait a minute," she requested, shoving something around. Then, "OK, try again!"

So again I made as if to shove the great furry bloke through the opening. He resisted, frantically bracing his front feet against the cat-door frame, yowling madly, and wetting all over the top step (and, consequently, my socks). Sorry, mates, but that's the awful truth. He has a problem.

Mum swung open the people-door and we then tried shoving him into the cat carrier. The moment we got him inside, he whipped round quick as lightning and banged his face against the fence-like metal of the cat carrier door, trying to get out again.

Mum, not wanting him to hurt himself, opened the carrier and gathered him into her arms, trying to quiet his frantic howling. A few ticks later, we again tried shoving him into the carrier, which he seemed to see as the equivalent of a Nazi gas chamber. This time we got him in, not without all kinds of bother, and packed him off to the vet.

Good grief...try making a huge furry cat (who weighs over a stone, by the way!) do something he doesn't want to do. Not bloody likely!

And then a few minutes ago, Mitty threw up a wad of string, for the umpteenth time (on my floor, of course). Mum's been doing a lot of sewing lately, and apparently string has some sort of unreal fascination for these felines. Whatever. I tell you, they are loves, but sometimes...