SIR, A CAT FELL THRU MY CEILING

 
I got this text the other day: “Sir, there’s a cat in our restaurant that came through the ceiling.”

I rent to a restaurant. The cat belongs to a tenant who lives upstairs. The cat was in the restaurant, and I was getting calls. The cat-owner wasn’t around.

The access panel in the tenant’s bathtub was loose, and the cat had scurried down the pipe chase into the restaurant. I called the cops. “This is not an emergency,” I said.  I explained the cat-in-the-restaurant was a one-off freakish thing and wouldn’t happen again.

“It better not,” the cop said.

I shouldn’t have called the city. That often muddies things.

Eventually an animal warden came around and got the cat, and the tenant picked up the cat.

And then a couple days later, the cat fell through the ceiling again. My handyman had apparently not screwed in the access panel tight enough. Or maybe the cat was a tiger.

We got longer screws. We’re OK for the moment. Cat is not on the menu.