When we had just two cats, we couldn’t find one, but we could hear her. It sounded like she was under the loveseat.
Close. She was IN the love seat. The thin fabric sheet that covers the bottom had come loose and she had crawled into it and couldn’t figure out how to get out again.
We had to flip the thing over (gently, of course) and got her out. She wouldn’t go near the thing for months.
I have a habit of dropping my coat where ever I happen to be when I take it off. One day I’d left it on the couch. When I went to get it to go out again, I found it to be unexpectedly heavy. Opening the coat revealed the head of my cat, who had somehow managed to back her way down the sleeve so that the only part of her exposed to the air was her head.
Wish I’d gotten a picture of that.
One cold day last winter, I couldn’t find Scooter Henry. He’s deaf, so calling him doesn’t do any good – when he’s missing, you just have to keep hunting. I checked all of his normal haunts – the linen closet, under the living room rug, under the bath mat – and no cat. I was really starting to get worried, and went in the bedroom to look again. My dog, who was sprawled on the bed, wagged his tail when I walked into the room, and I caught a glimpse of something white. I lifted up his tail, and there – apparently emerging from the dog’s butt – was a cat head. Yes, the cat was cold, and what warmer place for a nap than a pit bull’s crotch?
That happened to my cat too, except he was stuck in the door all night. It rained that night, too, so when he was discovered and released the following morning one side of him was wet and the other dry.
We came home and could hear a cat crying upstairs. We could tell it was Irving from the voice.
And we found her in the spare bedroom, hanging from a curtain. Her claws were stuck.
This is the same cat I once saw walk across a rug, snag her claws, and just fall over like she was poleaxed.
Yeah, she’s not Mensa material.
Jim’s enamoured of a bag of potatoes. He lies on top of it like it was comfortable or something.
Both boys were asleep on the lawn when it came on to rain this past weekend and they both sat there meowing indignantly instead of coming inside. It’s been a drought here for the past year or so and they do not have the hang of what to do in a rainstorm.
We had a cat that used to climb the curtains and wedge himself between the wall and the curtain rod and fall asleep. Then when he wanted to get down, he would start clawing his way down head-first. He never learned that his claws pointed the wrong way for that, and would time after time end up in a pile at the bottom of the curtains. They say cats always land on their feet, but not this cat. He landed on his head more often than not. :wally
Euronymous used to love to sleep in a little pouch under the uphostery of one of our chairs. Cutest damn thing.
Once, I lost my kittens. My 2 cats had cavorted in evil carnal knowledge without the benefit of clergy, and as a result they produced a litter of 4 bastard kittens. One day, when the kittens were about 8 weeks old, I came home and they were nowhere to be found. Their parents were out, fat and sassy as always, but no kittens. As I lived at the time in a 1 bedroom apartment, there weren’t a lot of places they could be. I looked under the bed. Zip. I looked under all of the couches and chairs. Bupkis. I checked behind the washer and dryer. No cats to be found. I examined the bathroom. Nothing. I checked all of the closets, even though their doors weren’t open. Nada. Had someone broken in and stolen my kittens, leaving behind the TV,stereo and the cash on my dresser? Unlikely. Completely baffled, I opened the fridge to get a coke, and that’s when I heard a small “meep”. I looked down, and there in the crack between the dishwasher and the fridge was a small kitten face looking back at me. My kittens (all 4 of them ) were behind the dishwasher. It took me some time to entice them out from there, but I figured out what had happened pretty quickly.
Their father, a big cat named Sulu who is now living with Venoma, liked to try and open the cabinet beneith the sink with his paw. He was never successful because the hinges would slam the door shut after he’d opened it a few inches, but this time he must have tried and one of the kittens got wedged in the open door before it could shut, creating an opening through which all of the kittens merrily tumbled, giving them all access to the hole in the cabinet wall that led behind the dishwasher. That is where they were when I got home.
Story two:
I’m in sales, and a long time ago the job I was working required me to carry a big captain’s case. One time, at a client’s house, I got done, closed up my case without looking, and started to leave. As I was walking out the door, my case said “Meow”. Opening it, I found that the client’s kitten had jumped in while we were talking and fallen asleep, if he hadn’t woken and meowed, I would have stolen these people’s cat! That Prolly wouldn’t have been the best way to cement the sale, y’know?
GeekCat has been caught in between the front door and the storm door on more than one occasion, and got locked in the garage on a couple of nights.
Yesterday, she managed to end up in our attic. I’m still not quite sure how.
When I was a kid we had a small calico cat named Jo-Jo. My Mom was washing dishes at the kitchen sink, when Jo-Jo, who was outside, suddenly jumped up to land on the sill of the kitchen window!
Mom also opened a cabinet door, to get some dishes. Jo-Jo was walking clamly along one shelf! Mom said “Josephine!”
This cat also hid from me. I called her when I was sure she was beneath a couch in the living room. She was, and she poked her head out from under the couch long enough to peek at me, upside down. 
Our big cat Archie, from the Sixties, liked to hide from us silly humans in the shrubbery near the house; we called it his “jungle.” My sister and I were in the back yard, and I was cleaning up after our dog (who was only slightly bigger than Archie and scared to death of him). I tossed the water from the dog’s water bowl over a short fence along the side of the house and my sister said, “I think Archie is back there!” :o
We found our Hurricane (and his brother) under the drive-through menu at McDonalds. My mom found him one day and sent me up to get them.
We’ve found Emmy sitting under the bathroom sink - she opens cabinets and crawls in.
Oscar will sleep in any box he can find. He’s kind of boring.
E.
Dad bought a pool table when I was a kid and we soon learned to check the return rails to see if any cats were napping in there. It was a favorite spot of Shadow’s - who was, of course, black.
I found Tee, our former stray, in our window box among the geraniums. I was watering them, when suddenly a cross and sleepy white face popped up between two plants. I ran for the camera, because he looked so damn mad. I’ll scan later and post it somewhere. He’s been living exclusively indoors for the last five years, and he’s pretty certain he’s Lord Of The Manor here. He likes to sleep in the entertainment center, between the TV and the shelf - gives him a nice vantage point from which to attack the dog (and here it should be noted that Tee is a twelve-pounder, and the dog is a 100-pound Mastiff.) He has also slept in the fireplace.
Cara has been found inside the walls - we had a loose grille over a heat vent, and she crawled right in. She’s not very social, so we often find her in the canning closet in the basement, generally in a box two sizes too small for her. Occasionally she hides in the linen closet. The problem is, as anti-social as she is, she detests a closed door of any kind. So she knocks and scratches until the door gets opened, and then when you open it, she takes off in the opposite direction.
Tasha has been found inside the china cabinet (she can open the door, and she’s done it often enough that I finally moved the china and use that space to store unbreakable things) and once in a potted plant.
Inside the box spring of my bed (note: it’s not so much a “springs” as it is a “box”). The heavy piece of cloth covering the bottom side got torn, and both cats liked to climb up through the rip and hide inside the box, until their weight pulled so much of the cloth down that I had to cut it all off. They still like to climb up under and perch precariously on the wooden slats.
Two days after bringing the new kitten home, I came home from work to a faint (and distressed) mewing. After finally narrowing down the location, i found (to my horror) that the kitten had fallen down the hole formed by where the water heater meets the corner of the walls. Standing on top of the dryer, and staring down the hole with my lighter, I saw the kitten, 6 ft down, looking back up at me. I honestly didnt know what I was going to do. You cant move the water heater, and the only wall to cut to get to the kitten would had been the next door neighboors wall, or the exterior apartment wall.
So I did what any rational person would have. I pulled the shoestring out of my shoes and played on the fact that kittens love string. Using a tactical fishing manuever, I managed to snag my kitten by the claws and pull him up 6 ft out of the hole. I think he knew he had to hang on if he wanted out of the hole :g:
Last summer a stray cat, great with child, showed up in the back yard. She gave birth to seven (!) healthy, happy kittens. In their sixth week on the screened porch, the kittens made good use of two (empty) metal watering cans. One kitten popped in, two kittens popped out. Two kittens popped in, three kittens popped out. Ridiculous fun. … In short order Mr. MercyStreet and I figured out you could cram six kittens into one watering can. The seventh simply had to wait his turn.
I’m very pleased to report that every kitten – and their mommy – went to absolutely terrific homes.
Snowball came crashing through the ceiling the way Judd Nelson did in The Breakfast Club.
We’d moved into a has whose former tenant was a musician. Oe room was sound proofed. The ceiling in that room was 1" styrofoam instead of drywall. My father had cut a hole in it to build a small trap door that would let him turn off the water to the outdoor spiget to keep the pipe from freezing in the winter. Snowball had climbed up a shelving unit, entered through the trap door, and had wandered around insdie the ceiling, probably thinking “Oo, this place is neat!” then came crashing through while my father and I were trying to find him.
My cats love my box spring and hide in there at any chance. At four or so in the morning one will pop out and demand love–leaving poor sleepy me to wonder how it got through my closed bedroom door.
My youngest, smallest, and dumbest cat, Pixel, got stuck behind my dad’s GIANT desk when we were visiting. It sits in a corner so she walked in next to one wall and then wedged herself into the space between the desk and the other part of the wall. Then she realized she couldn’t back out and started mewing. And mewing. One would have thought we had a basket of kittens in a meat grinder, the noise she made. We ended up having to move the huge, ceiling-high in some places, solid-oak desk to get the little moron out.
Is up on the roof of our two-story house a weird place? We’ll occasionally spot our outdoor cats peering down at us.
A stray mama cat gave birth to kittens in our barn. Of course at first they were very shy and became very good at hide-and-seek. One day we found them up in the rafters: the two orange ones easy to spot, and the black one visible only by his eyes.