Sparky was in his basement hidey-hole when the plumber arrived at 7:30 Tuesday morning to tear out the old concrete laundry sink in the corner of the basement and install a new one. The plumber was in between Sparky and the basement stairs, so Sparks didn’t get an opportunity to escape from the basement until the plumber finished up, packed all his equipment, and departed the premises — at 3:30 in the afternoon!

Sparks has always been a painfully shy cat. He likes to visit with us in the mornings for an hour or two, but then he usually heads down the stairs to the basement to disappear until ten or eleven o’clock when he’ll come back up, cry loudly for attention, and take some skritches behind his ears before napping on the sofa all afternoon. He doesn’t do strangers. He runs for the basement at the slightest hint that strangers are at the door, even when the doorbell rings but nobody comes in. That’s why when the plumbers showed up and started making all kinds of noise, we knew we weren’t going to see Sparky for the rest of the day, maybe not the rest of the week.