Good Boy Chronicles: Extraction!

Okay, again:  Good Boy is FINE.  And also, this is the last part of a multi-part story, so if you want to start from the beginning, scroll down until you hit the "Good Boy Chronicles:  Disappeared" post, and read up from there.  Now settle in for a long read.

Here we go!

When I left off, Good Boy had been located.  He was alive and under the floor of the adopter's house.  Now we just had to get him out.

The firefighter knelt down by the hole under the sink, because he thought that one would be easiest to enlarge, and stuck his hand in the hole, feeling around to see how much material would have to be removed to allow access.  "He's headbutting my hand!," he called.  "His head is right here!"  

We all crowded around the hole, with the vet tech aiming a flashlight.  There ... he ... was ... just the top of his head, visible between the piping and the floorboards.

"There's not enough room," the firefighter said.  "He's right here, but he can't get out of this hole unless we get some of this flooring up."

The firefighter and the contractor started taking turns pulling on the floorboards and unscrewing the metal clamps that held the sink piping in place.  They didn't want to use power tools in order to avoid scaring Good Boy further back into the space, so just a prybar and manual tools were used.

 

Every time one of them would stick a hand in, Good Boy would rub it with his head. 

After several minutes, the hole was big enough to pull Good Boy through.  Except now he was scared, and every time the firefighter would try to pull him out, he would brace against the underflooring so that he couldn't be moved.

"Let me try," said the vet tech.  "I deal with stubborn cats every day.  I'll scruff him and pull him out."

She knelt into the cupboard, stuck her hand in, and scruffed Good Boy.  And then started to slowly pull.  Slowly ... slowly ... and all of a sudden, she leaned back out of the cupboard and onto the kitchen floor with Good Boy in her arms!

 

 Good Boy was out of the hole!  Covered in sheetrock and dirt, but alive!  And purring!  And making biscuits in the vet tech's arms!  She quickly looked him over and then popped him in a carrier and she, her boyfriend, and GB were off to the vet.  I told her I'd finish up in the house and then come there.

The adopter kept saying, "I'm going to get him back, right?"  Ummm ... sure.  SURE(LY NOT).  This woman farted around for almost TWO WEEKS, making no substantive effort to find Good Boy, while the rescue and I scrambled desperately to try and find him.  While the rescue volunteers canvassed the neighborhood and printed up flyers, she did nothing.  She claimed she didn't have five dollars to have flyers printed up on her own ... How on earth was she planning on paying vet bills?  Buying him food?  This loving cat had been so traumatized by her family that he lived in the FLOOR rather than come out.  She had falsified her application (by putting down that she had three children when in fact she had five (and another on the way), for one thing. I'm not really at liberty to discuss all the details, but trust me, that application stunk like a three-day-old fish.)  She had breached the adoption contract, and voided the agreement. 

The contractor repaired the hole in the wall and the hole under sink, all the while saying things like, "Gee, Good Boy will never get back in there now!"  Heh.  The contractor and I left together, I told him to email me a bill, and I headed for the vet.  I stopped on the way and texted the woman who runs the rescue to let her know that we had Good Boy, and she needed to immediately contact the adopter and tell her that since the application had been falsified, the cat would not be returned.  I told her to tell the adopter that I would mail the $500 reward to her (as soon as I knew that she had been informed that the cat would not be returned).  I figured that if the adopter was planning to make a fuss, accepting the reward money would negate any possible claim she would have.

I got to the vet's office and they took me to where the vet was examining him.   There he was, on the table, purring and kneading and rolling on to his back for belly rubs.  He was dehydrated and somewhat thinner and filthy dirty, but otherwise fine!  The vet thinks he may have been eating rodents that wandered into the crawlspace (shudder), and he had either found a dripping pipe in the wall or was able to sneak out at night to drink out of a leaking faucet.  (Remember, even though I had advised the adopter to leave out food and water in the house just in case, she did not do it.) The vet gave him some some sub-q fluids, and kept him overnight for observation.  Tired and dirty but happy, I headed home.

As soon as I got home, the rescue texted me and let me know that the adopter had been informed.  And right after THAT, the ADOPTER texted me.  She wanted to come pick up the reward money.  NOW.

Jesus Christ.

I let her know that we could meet someplace (I didn't want her and the skeevy people hanging around her place to come to my house) (Aside: Two days later, someone was STABBED IN THE STREET in front of her house. I'm not even kidding).  She said the local WalMart.  I said fine.  (You don't get much more public of a place than the entrance to WalMart.) She said it had to be RIGHT NOW.

Just like I figured it would when I offered to give her the reward, it had all come down to money.

 

She didn't ask about Good Boy or how he was.  She wanted to know how fast she could get the money.  I advised that I did not have that much cash on hand, but I would write her a check.

I texted the rescue and let them know what was going down.  "Get a release!," they said.  "You have to have them sign off on the cat in order to get the reward."  I typed something up real quick, made a copy, and messaged my friend Sarah to let her know what was going on.  "I'm on my way," she said.  The adopter texted me; it would be her husband meeting me, not her.  Inside the entrance, by the pharmacy.

I got to WalMart at the same time as Sarah.  We walked inside, and there was the husband.  Standing there with a cart full of crap he had picked out while waiting.  Now keep in mind, this is the same family who claimed they did not have five dollars on Monday to print up some flyers and had no way of getting money until Friday.  And there he was, on Wednesday night, with a cartful.  They had money, all right.  They just weren't about to spend it on Good Boy.

I handed the husband a clipboard with the releases.  "Just sign the releases, please, and I'll give you the check," I said.  He looked surprised, but signed both copies.  I took back the clipboard, kept one release, and gave him the other.  Then I pulled the reward check out of my pocket and handed it over.  And he went back into the store (never once asking how the cat was), and Sarah and I walked out and headed directly to the nearest bar for a beverage, now that the extortion, er, REWARD money was paid.  As we walked out of the store, Sarah pulled her phone out of her t-shirt pocket.  "I recorded the whole thing!," she said.  "Just in case."

Spies like us, man.  We get the job done.  We had a signed release and a recording of the whole thing.  

And the following night, Good Boy went to his new home.  His true FOREVER home this time.

My home.

Sarah took my foster kittens to stay at her house so that I could put Good Boy in the foster room.  I plan on working on building up his confidence, and then working with him and Tinks to get him integrated into the family.  I think that now that Good Boy is actually INSIDE the house, and soon will SMELL like the house, and Tinks will be able to see that Good Boy is welcome to BE in the house, things will go more smoothly.  And if not, we'll just keep working on it.  And working on it.

Because THIS is Good Boy's home now.