Page 19 of Home Town

The tiniest meow penetrated her panic. She froze, eyes wide, ears honed to listen for the sound again.

“Psss, psss, psss. Here, kitty, kitty,” she repeated.

Meow.

That had definitely come from inside this room. She could tell that even with as muffled as the sound was.

“Did you get inside the cabinet, you little devil?” Relieved, Josie strode toward the wall of kitchen cupboards.

She opened first one, then the next. The search excited Peanut Butter, who took it as an invitation to explore inside but didn’t yield the missing Jelly.

The kitten’s cry repeated again, this time with accompanying scratching. She was starting to run out of cupboards to check.

“Where are you?” Josie squatted down and flung open the two doors beneath the sink and watched in horror as Peanut Butter dove inside then disappeared through a small hole in the back wall cut out to accommodate the water pipes.

“Holy shit. Oh no. No, no. This is bad. So bad.”

Now both cats were inside the walls. They could be lost in there forever.

Panic had her glancing around her in search of anything that might help.

Food! They loved to eat.

She grabbed the box of the kitten’s dry kibble and shook the contents loudly near the opening. “Here, kitty, kitty. Want to eat? Food.”

Nothing. Not even a cry. They were too happy exploring to care about eating.

Or worse, they’d traveled through the walls. Too far to hear her. Too far for her to hear them. They could be trapped there!

What if she couldn’t get them out? With no food or water they’d die slowly and horribly inside the walls of the house.

She couldn’t let that happen. She had to do something.

“Shit-shit-shit-shit!” In full panic mode now she ran out the back door, chanting her four-letter-word-mantra the whole way to the garage.

Her father must have every tool known to man. He had to have something she could use to cut open that wall and get those kittens out.

Opening the garage door she flipped on the light and stared at the choices on the tool bench and those hanging on the pegboard wall behind it. She could do this. But she’d better do it fast before they got any farther.

Striding ahead she grabbed the first tool that looked like it could cut a hole, even though it looked scary.

She glanced down at the circular saw she’d snagged for ninety-nine dollars on an Early Bird Black Friday sale for her father’s Christmas gift one year. She’d lied and told Quinn it had cost two-hundred and his share was a hundred so she hadn’t had to pay anything but the tax. Considering she’d gotten up at four-thirty in the morning to wait on a long line to get it, she didn’t feel guilty about that at all.

Now she wished Quinn were here. The teeth of the blade were scary-sharp.

God, this could end in a disaster the level of which belonged in a horror movie.

She could cut a kitten in half trying to use this thing on the wall when she couldn’t see what was on the other side. She could slip and cut off her own fingers too.

Putting down the circular saw and its horrifying rotating blade of death, she picked up another tool. This one smaller. A jigsaw maybe? She remembered some of the things she’d learned in shop class and from watching home renovation shows.

The short straight single blade looked less deadly, but it still could do damage to the kittens if she cut into a wall blindly not knowing if they were on the other side.

Nope. Too scary. She put it down and admitted she really had no business using any power tools.

She perused the selections hanging on the wall, plucking off a claw hammer instead.

That might work better. She could knock a hole in the wall. Then pry off the wood and sheetrock to make it bigger. Big enough she could get a flashlight and her head inside and see what kind of situation she was dealing with.

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