I’ve previously mentioned Kinikini’s curiosity about our garage. The door from the garage into the house separates Kinikini’s everyday world from a new world of mystery, something he only started paying attention to over the past six months. When we come home after being out and about, we have to be careful to shut the garage door before going into the house, because Kinikini often lurks on the other side of the door so that he can try to slip past us and get some garage exploration time.

When he was successful, I used to follow him into the garage and try to coax him to come back in. That rarely worked. So then our strategy became to just leave him out there for a few minutes, alone in the garage. Usually it only takes a couple of minutes for him to become anxious to get back inside. When I open the door to check on him, he flies back inside as if he’s being chased.

When we got back from shopping on Tuesday, he made it past our unsuccessful blocks and into the garage. He repeated this run in the early evening, while we were making dinner, takikng advantage of Meda’s quick foray into the garage to slip past and claim his right to explore.

When Meda came back in, she let me know that she was leaving Kinikini there for a while. Teach him a lesson, was the unspoken message.

I was up early Friday morning, and when I started to feed the cats their breakfast, I noticed Kinikini hadn’t eaten much of his food the night before. That prompted me to check on him. And that’s when I realized he had last been seen escaping into the garage the prior evening. He must have been there all night with no food or water!

Oh, no! I ran over to the door and tore it open. There was no sign of him. But it was only about a second and a half before an orange blur flew out from under the car, up the three stairs into the house, past the door, made the pivot toward the kitchen and across the living room before it slowed. Kinikini was very, very glad to be back inside. It was the first time he had spent any significant time in the garage, and he had been shut out there for the whole night. He had tried to apparently done his best to get back in, or at least signal us that he was there, as evidenced by the shredded rubber gasket around bottom corner of the door frame.

Instead of “teaching him a lesson,” we feel guilty for forgetting about him! Luckily, it wasn’t too traumatic since he quickly returned to lurking at the door whenever we go in or out.

But I’m sure we’ll all be more careful in the future.