I couldn’t stop thinking about the kitten when I was in Tokyo. I knew that my friends were very trustworthy and would treat it at least as well as I would. Probably better. But I had this weird superstition that something bad would happen to it if I weren’t there to watch it myself.

When I got back to Maebashi, I took a nap and got on the computer. No one had responded to any of the emails or postings I had made looking for someone to take the kitten.

I couldn’t wait to see the kitten any longer. I wanted the kitten and I wanted to show it off. I sent my friend, R, a message and drove off to my catsitting friends’ apartment.

And now, a little about R. R is from Texas and once worked as a janitor in a professional wrestling arena. Until recently he had a big Confederate general squared mustache and beard. He likes motorcycles, owns a PT Cruiser with neon blue underlighting, and has a concealed handgun license in his wallet. Somehow he also has a computer science degree, plays World of Warcraft, and is perfectly tickled by my theatrical, melodramatic antics. R and I trade LOLcat macros and videos of kittens on YouTube. Seeing as he shared my dark obsession with small furry things, I decided to invite him up to show off my fuzzball.

He got to Maebashi and called me from the station in the middle of a disaster.

.As my friends and I loaded its things into my car my friends told me that the kitten had been eating and drinking and had started to purr a little. But it seemed to have no sense of smell. It didn’t recognize food until they shoved it right in its face. I said it probably had a cold. Wouldn’t you if you were stuck in cold water for hours? They had seen it stalk around the room at little at night when everything was quiet.

We put the kitten back in the box and put it in my car in the seat next to me. The kitten started to crawl out. I didn’t close the box on it because I thought it would be fine to let it wander around while I drove. Then something very strange happened. The kitten jumped to the floor of the passenger side. Then there was half a kitten and then no kitten. It disappeared. I bent over and felt around. It appeared that there was a small hole behind the glove compartment and that this hole led to a long series of spaces in the console of the car.

Now I couldn’t drive the car. Well, I probably could but I didn’t want to risk it. I was pretty certain that there was no opening to the engine back there, but what if there were some sort of fan, or damaged wire, or what if it were too close to the steering wheel? For yet another time in my life I wished I had paid more attention when my dad tried to teach me about car mechanics.

I tried reaching my arm up but couldn’t feel the kitten. We all tried. We got flashlights. We called to it, since it usually calls back. We heard nothing. No movement. No meowing.

Usually when an animal is scared and hiding the best thing to do is let it come out on its own. But we all agreed that this was probably not going to happen. We had seen this kitten hide somewhere for hours. It might never come out. This cat didn’t seem to bright, it might rather die than come out from hiding. Then I’d have a dead kitten rotting inside my car.

We couldn’t lure it out with food. We weren’t sure that it would even want to come out to eat and it wouldn’t be able to smell the food because of its cold. So even though it’s usually a bad idea, we thought maybe scaring it out might be the best option. We tried knocking from one side of the console towards the exit. We tried rocking the car. When I got brave enough, I turned the radio on really loud. Nothing. Not even a scared mew or a rustle.

I called someone from my company to get the info from the car rental place. No answer. I called the woman I had been cat sitting for. I wasn’t really sure what she could do but she’d lived in Japan for over 10 years and she owned a cat in Japan. Those were both better qualifications than the three of us had. She said she’d be right over.

When she got there she didn’t have any new extracting ideas so she went looking around the neighborhood for a mechanic. I had saved this dumb kitten’s life, I wasn’t even going to keep it, and now I was going to have to pay mechanics to rip my car to shreds looking for it. An hour later my friend returned with two mechanics from Nissan. My car is Suzuki but they said it didn’t matter. I thought it would be hard to find someone to help but really, how cold hearted do you have to be to refuse aid to a poor upset girl and her stuck kitten?

R called just about the time they started taking my car apart. I was only half paying attention when I gave him directions from the station to the apartment, but on the somehow he found it on the second try.

They took off the glove compartment. They took off the casing to the steering wheel. They took off the part next to the glove compartment. They said there was an opening to the engine, but it was so small that not even a kitten about the age of two months should be able to fit. With almost all of the open space in the console exposed they shined flashlights into the rest. No kitten. They reported that there was no chance the kitten was in there.

By now it was dark.

We thanked the men and they didn’t charge me for their assistance. I was devastated.

Had I just imagined seeing the kitten climb up there? Or had it actually dashed out the door when we weren’t looking? Maybe it did fit through that little hole.

We searched all the nearby nooks and crannies with dying flashlights. No kitten.

Failure.

On the drive back to my apartment I was wavering on tears. R tried to distract me by singing his favorite Pillows songs but my guilt was overwhelming me.

Mew!

It sounded like it was behind the steering wheel!

I turned off the road. We heard nothing. “Try singing again,” I told R.

Mew!

And then nothing again.
We searched the car but couldn’t find it, so I started driving again.

I was relieved and furious. At least I knew the cat was inside the car… but the cat was still inside the car.

“Kitten! When I get a hold of you, I’m going to put you right back in that ditch!”

“She’s lying,” said R in his adorable kitten voice. “Come on out, little one.”

Back at my apartment, I unloaded the kitten’s things and told R that the kitten was his cute little problem. R took off the glove compartment again and peered up with a flashlight. This time the kitten was visible. He reached his hand up. He could touch the kitten but he couldn’t quite get a good grip. “Just pull it out,” I said. “Hurting it couldn’t be worse than leaving it up there to starve itself. I hope it didn’t piss in my vents.”

When I put the kitten’s stuff in my apartment, I noticed that the litter had never been used.

So R grabbed and pulled. The kitten didn’t struggle against R, exactly. It wasn’t clawing him or fighting his hand. It was just holding on to that hiding place as hard as it could. “Kitten, you’re about as sharp as a bag of wet mice,” he said. R could get it half way out and it would wriggle three quarters back in. Finally, he ripped the kitten out of there and handed it to me.

“You suck,” R said in his kitten voice and tapped it on the nose.

I took the kitten inside and put it on the floor. It immediately hid under my washing machine.

In an admirably coordinated team effort, R tipped back the washing machine while I darted my hand under to grab the kitten.

Now that I had a hold of it, I kept it on my lap while we watched a few Venture Brothers cartoons.

It purred.

That night, I slept in my fort on the guest futon so I could be at the same level as the kitten. It laid on my chest for a while, purring, and then spent the rest of the time stalking around the fort.

When the kitten finally did pee on my futon, I realized I didn’t really care so much anymore. Now the cost of the kitten was up to ¥6,000 with the expense of a new futon, but what could I do? I was starting to fall in love.