The cat in the box

Ever since I was a child I have been possessed with what might be called extreme nosiness. Now, when most people think of that word, they imagine a town gossip or someone who pries into the personal business of others. Perhaps that isn’t really the right word to use, as I’m no gossip (though I have been guilty of listening in on such tidbits of information occasionally) and I don’t butt into people’s personal lives. Curiosity might be a better term, though that doesn’t begin to cover the scope of it. Imagine a cat that is faced with a paper bag or box. It cannot help but crawl inside to have a look. Even if the area it is exploring might be dangerous. I had a cat that got plastered up in the wall of my apartment when plumbing work was being done. The plumber cut a small hole in the wall to get to the shower pipes, and my cat crawled in there while the plumber left for lunch. Once the work was done, the wallboard was plastered over and there was my cat, trapped in a space within the wall and beneath the bathtub. He was howling plaintively beneath the bathtub. I went to my toolbox and got a keyhole saw and cut him out, but so great was his desire to reenter that newly opened space I had to block off the hole until maintenance could come back the next day and seal it. He also got trapped in the dishwasher once, but luckily he was discovered before anyone turned it on.

In some ways I have lived my life very much like my cat lived his, though luckily I never got into a situation where someone had to rescue me. But I did get into trouble on occasion. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house. This was because my mom had divorced my father and she had to work to support the two of us. Next to my grandparents lived an older couple who kept and bred beagles for hunting. Sometimes I’d go visit the woman when she was working in the garden or hanging up clothes outside. Occasionally she’d invite me to come inside. But there was something about her house that totally drove me nuts, something that lit in me a burning urge to get to the bottom (or in this case the top) of. Her house was just an average 1940’s era bungalow, but the upper floor had two front windows with dormers that jutted out from the roof. Those architectural features fascinated me to no end as it was so different from my grandparents’ ranch style home. It was unlike any home I’d ever been inside of. Many a time I’d be out playing outside and I’d look next door at those dormers and wonder what on earth the room inside would look like. I asked my mom about that, and she said they were just ordinary windows. But still, I really wanted to see for myself.

One day I happened to be outside, and the neighbor was in her backyard. I went over and talked to her. She invited me inside as she had done a couple of times in the past. She worked in the kitchen for a bit as we talked, and then she excused herself and said she’d be back shortly. I don’t remember if she went to the bathroom or down into the basement. But as soon as she left, I finally had the chance to satisfy that maddening desire to see what the inside of one of those mysterious upstairs rooms looked like. So I crept up the stairs, very quietly, and peered around the corner into one of those rooms. Then I took a few steps inside, and finally I was able to see what I had always wondered about for so long. The room I found myself in must have been her (and her husband’s) bedroom from the way it was furnished and the things on the dresser. I touched nothing, as I was taught not to root around in peoples’ personal things. Then I walked quietly over to that weird window, hoping to have a look out of it. Suddenly I heard a noise and I turned around, and there she stood with a most irritated look on her face. “What are you doing up here?” She yelled. I could barely even get out an answer that I wanted to see what the dormer looked like from the inside when she screamed at me to get out of her house. And so I did. I ran back down the stairs, out the back door and over to my grandparents house. My reconnaissance mission didn’t quite go as I had planned, but I did manage to satisfy my curiosity all the same.