We have a kitty, her name is Mackenzie but as with all pets, she goes by MANY nicknames… Mack, Baby Mack, Baby Girl, Dooters, Doots and a new one as of this week - Dootdini! I must explain the Dooters first before I continue…
Since the day that Mackenzie came home with us, she has strutted [and I mean John Travolta SNFever strutted!] and pranced about the house like she owns the joint. A clear, defining feature of this Baby Mack strut is her tail, pointing straight and tall towards the sky like a flag pole. One day, shortly after bringing her home to live with us, we remarked that you could almost hear her say, "Doot doot doot…"as she pranced down the hallway, tail proudly in the air. So… she was given the nickname "Dooters" and "Doots".
Anyways… Mackenzie is a very smart [sometimes too smart] kitty who possesses Houdini like skills - she’s an escape artist! Here is a prime example of how smart the little bugger is:
We had our carpets and furnace serviced and cleaned on Tuesday. So… with wet carpets and clumping litter, we naturally had to lock the kitties [Kodi and Mack] into a carpet-free room while the rugs dried. We put them in our upstairs office with the laminate flooring and went out for a few hours to run some errands, leaving them with food, water and a litter pan in case Mother Nature called…
Some 3 hours later, we come home. Immediately I go upstairs to release the inmates, and to my complete surprise, the office door is OPEN! Kitties are gone! No one was in the house, other than the kitties, when we left - so how did they get out? The knob on the office door is not long, handled [it’s a cylindrical style knob] and it’s got a pretty stiff spring inside for turning. So a little confused, I go back downstairs, turn to hubby Terry saying - "they’re not upstairs"…
"What?!?" he says. "You mean she opened the door?"
"I guess so… So where are they?" I replied and turned around to look in my art room/studio.
There they were, pleased as punch, sitting on their very large, very hairy, very loved cat "condo", grinning from ear to ear saying to us silently "Here we are! Aren’t we smart!"
Stunned, we looked at each other and proceeded to go upstairs to figure out our 4-legged Houdini’s escape route. It became apparent quickly…
Baby Mack has a routine in our office - basically she wants to be as high as possible in any given room she is in, at all times. We have a set of high shelving units and a tall CD stand immediately adjacent to the office door. We believe that our Houdini perched on the CD stand with her butt and back feet on the stand, placed her front paws on the door knob [which conveniently turned in the same direction as she was facing] and leaned forward on the knob until it turned. Presto! Dootdini has escaped from yet another room!!! Brilliant… and a little scary LOL =)
Our gentlemanly lemming Kodi is merely a follower… we KNEW who the real culprit was in the great escape - Dooters aka Dootdini, the Greatest Kitty Escape Artist in Richmond BC!
