The Cat in the Ceiling

The scratching starts at six in the morning, directly above Elsa's bed. It is slow and deliberate, like somebody drawing a long line with a fingernail. Then comes a thin, offended meow.

By seven, she has worked out what has happened. The neighbor's gray cat, who has always sat on the shared balcony watching Elsa's plants with contempt, has found a gap behind the bathroom pipes. She has climbed into the space above the ceiling and, apparently, cannot find the way back.

The neighbor arrives in slippers, close to tears. "She's never done anything like this," she says. "She's afraid of the vacuum cleaner."

Soon, the hallway fills with helpers nobody quite invited. A retired electrician from the second floor brings a ladder and an enormous flashlight. The man from the top floor brings a tin of tuna and the opinion that cats cannot resist it.

They open the tuna in the bathroom and wave it under the access panel. The cat answers with a single, flat meow that sounds like a refusal. The electrician climbs the ladder and shines the light through the gap. "I can see her eyes," he reports. "She's looking at me like I owe her money."

By ten o'clock, it has been decided that the panel is too small to reach through. "If I were you," the electrician says, "I'd cut a hole. The plaster is old, and it will take a clean patch." Elsa, who has never cut anything more serious than a birthday cake, finds herself holding a small saw.

The hole is not neat. A cloud of white dust drifts down over the sink, the mirror, and all three neighbors. The cat, who has been following the noise, retreats deeper into the ceiling and goes silent.

"Well, that worked beautifully," the top-floor neighbor says, wiping plaster from his eyebrows.

They stand and look at the dark hole. Eventually, the owner sits down on the edge of the bathtub. The electrician starts a rambling story about a parrot he once rescued. Elsa makes a pot of coffee, because it seems wrong not to.

An hour later, they have stopped paying attention to the ceiling. The electrician is halfway through his second parrot story when something soft lands on the floor behind them.

The cat is covered in plaster dust, so that she looks like a ghost of herself. She does not look at the owner. She does not look at the tuna. She walks straight past all of them, climbs onto Elsa's sofa, and settles in the exact center of the cushion.

"She hates your sofa," the owner says weakly.

"Apparently not," says Elsa.