Fostering cats with Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab involves a lot of love, a lot of patience and, often, a lot of common sense problem solving skills.

It’s like babysitting— having responsibility for someone else’s living creatures.

Touch of Grey has some balance issues and can be very agressive. She can also be a sweet cat, but she has several triggers which lead us to believe she may have been abused or mistreated. For instance, she freaks out when you are handling blankets.

Yesterday, as I was bringing the laundry up from the basement and Touch of Grey ran full force into my legs and bounded down the stairs.

Now if TOG doesn’t want to be handled, she will attack. So I tried to coerce her upstairs. She didn’t want to.

There’s a big tote of old blankets in the basement and she likes to sleep in there so I figured she would take a nap and come up at meal time.

But she didn’t turn up.

So we checked around the basement and didn’t see her in any of the usual spots. But it’s a basement. Cats have expert hiding skills.

We put out a bowl of kibble.

In the morning, still no TOG. We heard a rumbling in the ductwork. Now we know there is a spot under the stairs where the cats can get into the bottom of the hardwood floor and make their way into the cool air return.

In the past, I have already lifted the grate in the living room to let her out. But even there we couldn’t find her.

And we heard metallic grumbles.

The teenager asked our firefighter neighbor to come help her check the ducts.

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Touch of Grey was in the bottom of a duct, with a freshly dead mouse. We suppose she chased it and fell into the lower ductwork.

Thank goodness, she is safe.

In other news, one of our other FURR cats, Khloe, decided to attack the vacuum cleaner while I was tidying today. I immediately turned it off. Let her think she defeated the large plastic mechanical animal.