Trapped!

When I came home yesterday, that is to say, Monday, no one greeted me in the kitchen. No one at all. We'd just had a thunderstorm and I rather expected Apricot to be hidden away somewhere, as he is terrified of thunderstorms, but where were the kittens? Don't tell me they'd been scared by the thunderstorm (and Apricot's reaction to it) and were hiding under the sofa with him.

I shrugged and figured they'd show up eventually, and proceeded to start to take my shoes off. To my astonishment, a fuzzy orange tabby back curved by me. Apricot? Yes, there he was. Seemingly unworried about the thunderstorm we'd just had (I had left work after it passed over, but apparently there was huge hail and a tornado ... not sure about the rumor about the tornado though).

So ... okay, I had upside-down kitty (with just Apricot) and Apricot Cuddles (without anyone else hanging out in the kitchen) and it was so weird. Like before they came. There was no noise from the rest of the house. Where-ever could they be?

I waited as long as I could for them but nobody showed up. I supposed I would continue with the rest of the afternoon's chores, so I headed back to the bedroom in order to start cleaning the litter boxes. As I passed the bathroom door I noticed it was closed.

Now wait just a minute. I don't close that door unless I'm on the inside of it. I didn't leave it closed this morning. Uh oh.

I opened the door cautiously, and was greeted by a wave of black, white, and brown tabby fur as they both surged out of the bathroom and into the hallway. They weren't vocalizing, but I didn't need meows to know they were telling me how very traumatic it had been to be trapped in the bathroom.

Well, I sympathized with them and petted them and reassured them and acted very puzzled as to how they got in there. Mostly because I was, but also because there was a hint of accusation in how they were acting around me. A very vague hint, nothing concrete, but I could tell the thought had crossed their minds that somehow I'd trapped them in there.

I cast back to the morning and no, I'd given everybody their goodbye kiss right before I left, so I hadn't accidentally trapped them in there. I even gave a moment's thought to the idea that Apricot had gotten so fed up with kitten behavior that he had somehow shut the door, but the door doesn't swing in that direction. In order to shut it without opposable thumbs, you'd have to push it shut, and that would only work from the inside.

Which meant they had to have done it to themselves.

Later that evening Thimble actually demonstrated how it had happened, or at least the beginning of it. He went behind the door in that small area left between the door and the wall when the door is opened, and he and Colby started playing footsie through the hinge gap. (This made me wince, thinking of squashed paws.) As they played, Thimble's movement kept bumping the door and making it swing farther and farther shut.

The only thing I can think of is that he had gotten it almost shut, Colby was inside with him after the hinge gap became too small to work with, and then the sudden pressure drop from the thunderstorm pulled the door shut the rest of the way. I know it can do that because I've seen it happen; it's how they both got trapped in there that I'm not sure of.

But in any case, now I keep my little bathroom heater in front of the door to hold it open.

I don't know how long they were in there. If it was just during the thunderstorm, it was less than an hour. But they had managed to up-dump the trashcan (that would be Colby's doing, I imagine), scratch up the bathroom rug (which looks fine once I pulled the loose bits off it), bundle the floor towel up and toss it in the corner, and knock over the shell dolly (a small figure made of shells that looks like a human person). Oddly, they didn't knock off any of the three breakables I have on the counter.

So, no harm done to either them or the bathroom's contents. They were fine and Thimble came rushing into the bathroom this afternoon when I asked him if he wanted to keep me company while I took my bath.