A Boy Named Cupcake, Part Two (of Three)

...When we last left Cupcake #2, he was living as a young bachelor, somewhat abandoned by all humans he had known, although it had never been those humans' intention for such a fate to be Cupcake #2's.  Wondering about The Man who came regularly, patrolling his territory, and napping in the warm sunshine of his very own house:  all of these had  to be put on hold immediately one night.


In the darkest part of the night, while Cupcake #2 was sleeping in a favorite corner of one of his house's beds, a terrible storm erupted in the skies outside.  Knowing that thunder and lightning often meant hours of loud, slapping rain at the windows and howling winds, Cupcake repaired to the basement quickly.  Although it had never been a favorite hang-out, it was always a safe HIDE-out for sure.  Once in the basement, Cupcake tried to sleep again, but found himself awoken very soon by what seemed like a new kind of rain. In his young life, he had seen rains through the windows and screen doors, quite a few times.  But THIS rain was harder, louder, taking on a life of its own it would seem, than anything the young cat had ever experienced.  He didn't like it, so he spent the next hours prowling nervously.  The thunderstorm went on all night long...


As morning hours began to wane, and Cupcake knew the sky would soon lighten even just a little bit, even with the rain, he realized he had not even THOUGHT about his food and water all night.  Looking back now, he'll tell you it must have been some sort of Divine/Feline Intervention that caused him to race up to the top basement step; that is where The Man kept Cupcake's water and variety of foods.  Having worried and prowled himself right out of energy, Cupcake recalls devouring most of his food and almost all of the water.  It might have been his late-night meal that saved his life... 


Because no sooner had he finished it, then he heard the leak.  His basement hide-out was ... no, it couldn't... COULD IT BE? ... leaking rain down the walls, onto the floor and very rapidly into puddles!?!  He didn't have much time to consider this phenomenon as more and more rain seemed to materialize from nowhere onto the walls and floors of Cupcake's hide-out.  He considered going back to the upper rooms, but at the top of the stairs, he found that the door had blown shut sometime in the night, where it was usually left open just widely enough for a cat to slither through.  


What to do!  Cupcake didn't know what would happen or when the water would stop seeping and dripping into his basement home.  So he acted quickly and instinctively and darted around searching for something he'd never had to target before:  the highest, driest, most hidden spot there was.  And he found it briskly, making his way up a "staircase" of sorts, a pile of plastic crates beside the washing machine... and from the washing machine onto the highest wooden shelf, made by Grandma's late husband many years before and still strong (and dry, in the center of the room).


Cupcake #2 watched the waters rise in the basement of his home for about two hours, he figures, before he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.  The water did not seem to be climbing anywhere near to him; however, it HAD climbed almost all the way to the middle of the washing and drying-human-clothes machines!  This observation he made the next morning, when a bright sun shone through the window wells, apparently having melted away the storms...


Cupcake #2 opened his alert and shining eyes to behold all of the wreckage:  the off-center, slightly-floating machinery!  A favorite blanket of his that had been on the floor, now half-sunken, half-on-the-surface, a soggy mess of heavy material.  A toy mouse, reeking of soaked catnip, sailed by.  Cupcake did not take long to have the thought that he did not know how to swim.  And anyway, what cat in his right mind WANTED to swim; that had always been his take on the matter.  He would have done it, to survive, if he knew how, but the fact remained, that he didn't know how.  


The spunky little boy-cat spent that morning exploring from the higher shelves.  He dipped a paw here, a tip of the nose there, taking the temperature of things, literally and figuratively.  Even if he could open that door at the top of the basement staircase, even if The Man would come and open it, even if it were standing there open right now ... How was anyone going to get to him, or him TO anyone?  


It was time to use all of his cat brain power ...
(our story will be continued later today--PROMISE)