“All of them. I didn’t close my door. I have Posh. Sporty is on the wall. Scary is by the fire extinguisher. Ginger is unaccounted for.”
“Ginger is unaccounted for?”
“Missing. Take Posh.”
I took Posh.
The hallway became an operation.
Peter extracted Sporty from the wall.
I cornered Scary behind the fire extinguisher using my phone’s flashlight and a series of clicking sounds that I called “kitten-specific auditory lures” and that Peter would later describe as sounding like a man having a conversation with his own teeth. That was rude but not entirely inaccurate.
Three found kittens. One missing.
We checked the stairwell, under every door, in the supply closet.
No Ginger.
Peter lay flat on the hallway carpet and checked beneath every door on the floor, which produced no kitten but did produce a brief, startling moment of eye contact with 4D’s dachshund, who was apparently conducting its own surveillance operation.
“She’s not in the hallway,” Peter said.
“Then she’s in an apartment.”
We split up.
Peter searched 4B. I searched mine.
“She’s not here,” Peter called from across the hall.
“She’s not here either,” I called back.
Then I heard it.
A faint, echoing mew coming from the wall.
Frominsidethe wall.
I dropped to my knees beside the bathroom vent.
“Wait. Peter! She’s in the bathroom vent.”
Peter crossed the hallway at a speed that the beige carpet had not previously experienced from a man in socks. He was on his knees beside me in seconds, his face near the grate, listening.
“She’s in the ductwork,” he said.
“The ductwork connects to the building’s HVAC system. If she goes far enough—”
“Kittens are liquid. Kittens can go anywhere,” hesaid with the confidence only a veterinarian could possess during a feline jailbreak.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Open the wet food. The fish one,” he instructed.
I got the food, while Peter removed the vent cover with a screwdriver from my kitchen drawer. He set the open can at the duct opening, and then we waited, side by side on my bathroom floor.
Three minutes passed.
