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Back to the event…One day as I was working in the other side of the house and Tamm had gone to town to do some errands one, two or all three of the cats got into our master bathroom.  Tamm had inadvertently left the plunger down and sealed in the basin.  One, two or all three of the cats we believe had managed to get up on the vanity counter, rubbed up against the water faucet and water began to flow.  I am sure you can imagine what came next.  Tammy came home from her errands, coming in from parking her car in the garage she walked in and thru the garage door and into the utility room, hearing what sounded like the sound of someone taking a shower.  She thought it was me.  She came around the corner to discover that we now had an inch or so of water all over the master bathroom floor and it was continuing to flow and grow.  She quickly saw that the water was running and turned off the flow of water from the faucet and then drained the basin.  The water had penetrated the entire master bathroom and was now feeding into the carpeted area of the master bedroom and into the hallway and into the utility.  It was all wet.  She frantically pulled every towel we had in the house to try and dry up the mess, shouting for me to come quickly as she tried to dry out the areas where water had penetrated.  We got it dried out, but the floor was wet, and we were afraid that damage had been done below in the sub-floor and in the plywood sub-flooring and crawl space below.  In the next few hours, Tamm and I managed to call our insurance company, put in a claim for the damage and our insurance adjuster contracted with a company in Longview that specializes in restorations like this to our home to figure what was the next step.  Drying it out was of course the next step and they sent a crew over the next day to start that process with fans and blowers to dry out all areas affected.  As the process progressed, they had to get under the house to check further for damage.  This is where Max, our black cat comes into the picture.  We are not sure if he started us down this path as Max rubs everything with his head, his body, and his long black tail.  We think he might have started this disaster.  All the cats have this as part of their day in and day out routine thru the house, but we think Max might have been the one to start us down this journey.  Rubbing this or rubbing that.  They guys from the restoration company had to get under the house to do some checking.  Max, being he is relentlessly curious about everything with the combination of all this motion and movement and guys coming in and out of the house, he was in heaven.  On the backside of the event that happened we think Max followed the tech into the crawl space.  When he got down there under the house, he must have hidden himself.  Because he is black, you might not see him as there is very little lite down there.  I am sure it seemed like a good idea to Max but in hindsight I am sure he thought it was the wrong place to be, being it was very cold, very dark. and most assuredly very dank down there.  I am sure he would not want to stay there…but he did.  The tech closed the crawl space door after his survey and review under the house and now Maximus was trapped down there.  Of course, we did not know that then, but hang on to your hats.  Near the end of that day, I was in my office working when I heard a faint sound, seemingly sounding far away.  It was the sound of a cat meowing like a cat does.  The sound seemed to be coming from the hallway area between the two bedrooms on that side of the house.  By now we had thought as techs were coming in and out of the house that day that Max had somehow gotten out.  None of the techs had seen him get out and leave the secure confines of our home.  Furthermore, we think he must have gotten out, got scared, or something scared him, and he was now loose and now gone.  We drove in our cars up and down the streets of Toledo looking for any sign of Max.  No luck…Tammy and I both put notifications on Facebook…but nothing.  I had even found a site on Facebook that a community of people watched out and helped others find their lost animals.  I paid for 7 days of a wider base of exposure to our lost cat Max.  We put a picture of him on this site in the hopes that someone would see him and report him back to us to retrieve.  We also thought maybe someone found him and took him out of the area.  We were sick about his loss. 

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