After several days of search efforts, a missing cat in Suttons Bay was found safe and hiding in an unlikely spot just outside her home.
Marty Ramsdell lives with her two cats, Frida and Hidy. While the two female cats, both nine-years-old, are sisters, have grown up together, and love each other dearly, they have opposite personalities and tendencies.
Ramsdell describes Frida as being fun, friendly, and playful, whereas sister Hidy is known for being elusive and spending most of her time in the basement ceiling. When visitors are over, Hidy tends to slip away into her hiding place in the basement ceiling, later returning when the coast is clear and when Ramsdell is the only one at home.
“There are many family members that are here frequently that have never laid eyes on Hidy. There’s very few people that have ever seen her. She’ll disappear as soon as soon as company comes in,” Ramsdell said. “She’s a wonderful cat and as sweet as can be. As young cats, she and her sister were very playful with each other and they still are today.”
A few weeks ago, Ramsdell said she was outside doing some gardening on a Saturday, and Frida joined her as she frequently travels in and out of the house when the door is left ajar. When Ramsdell eventually came back inside the house to watch a football game, she left the door slightly opened for Frida. It was not until the next morning that Ramsdell realized that Hidy was missing and must have exited the house while the door was open. Following this discovery, Ramsdell roamed the property searching for Hidy, called and alerted the neighbors, and posted on Facebook with no luck.
“I was really concerned, I spent days walking around alarming all the neighbors and putting it on Facebook,” Ramsdell said.
That following Tuesday, Ramsdell’s friends Robb, Dick, and Pat were already set to stop by to remove some downed trees from her yard. Pat, who Ramsdell describes as a naturalist, was admiring an old tree root that looked like a Great Horned Owl, and when she crouched down to take a picture, she relayed to the others that there may be something inside the root.
To everyone’s pleasant surprise, it was Hidy, but she would not come out.
“Fortunately, they (friends) were walking around back there. Had it not been for that, she probably would never have come out,” Ramsdell said. “She (Hidy) was in there all day Sunday, Monday, and most of the day on Tuesday and most of the day on Saturday because it was in the morning that I was out doing yard work.”
Ramsdell immediately made calls to cat experts who suggested putting a trap at the end of the log and to chainsaw 18 inches from her location. With Hidy about three feet inside the root, she said no one had heard of this kind of advice before, but they went ahead trying whatever they could to get her out.
On the first and second cut, they got nothing, and by the third cut, there was still no luck. Using a hole in the root that Robb could push, Hidy would still not move. She had an escape hole at either end, with towels, traps, screens, and people waiting, but Hidy would still not come out. So the entire log ended up being loaded on a dolly and wheeled down Lovers Lane to Ramsdell’s garage, where all doors were secured. Once visitors left, Hidy covertly exited the log in the attached garage and quickly rejoined her sister inside the house, had a big dinner, and went back to bed in her usual safe haven, the basement ceiling.
“She was so happy to be out,” she said. “When she came out she wanted to be loved… she wanted to be petted and she put her face up against mine and was all over me, then she did that with her sister. Then I got food out so she’d have food to eat, and she just gobbled it all up. That went on for about a couple of hours of being around us here, and then she went back downstairs to the basement and up into the ceiling.”
It was likely Hidy’s biggest adventure of her life, with Ramsdell adding that she doesn’t think she will venture out again.
“I don’t think she’ll ever do it again,” she said.
