My Kitten Escaped

I arrived at my home early Sunday morning after sleeping over at a friend's house. To my dismay, my kitten, Raphael, was nowhere to be found. Usually I would walk in to him bounding about the living room, biting and scratching anything and everything he could get his paws on. But not that day.

I began to panic. Had he silently slipped out after my mother when she had left the house earlier that day? Was he locked in a room or closet somewhere in the house? Had he died?

For about an hour, my mom and I scoured our neighborhood with cat food calling for him, looking under cars and the like. But he was nowhere to be found.

When we returned home, I went into my kitchen to check if he had been trapped in the refrigerator (that is my nightmare). As I opened the door to the fridge, I heard a slight sound.

"Raphael?"

The sound grew louder. I followed it through the back door in my kitchen into our very small concrete backyard.

Alas, Raphael was in my neighbors connected yard, huddled in a corner, mewing pathetically. I hopped over a low wall and ran to him.

"Raphael! How the hell did you get here?"

I grabbed him and put him inside. His tall tail bristled and he trotted into the house and began playing with his toys, please with himself for being found by so cleverly mewing. I assumed that he had gotten out after my mom and resolved simply to operate more carefully when opening and closing my front door.

Alas, it was a Saturday, and I left the house again for the day, very carefully, mind you, for I did not want him to escape again. Several hours passed. By the time I got home, it was mid-afternoon. Again, Raphael was nowhere to be found. But this time, I knew where to look.

I opened my back door and, alas, there he was, huddled in my alleyway against a snow shovel.

"How are you doing this?" I asked him.

"I can't answer you, I am a cat," he replied.

At this point, I was sure that he had some means of escape other than my house's doors. I searched through the house for the culprit opening.

Long story short, there was a hole in my basement. I put a wooden board over it and left it at that.