SO, tonight Matt and I made a quick trip to Wal-Mart then had dinner at Outback. Nice and relaxing. We got home and brought in our bags from the store (including the 55lb. bag of dog food that you should have seen me trying to get in the cart by myself while Matt was in another aisle. I'm stubborn, so I insisted I could/would do it myself). It's pouring down rain and getting windy. Another stormy night. But I don't mind because we have a vaulted ceiling and the rain sounds so soothing as it hits the roof.

But I digress.

I went into the spare bedroom to put the kitty litter away. We live in a 2 bedroom house and the spare bedroom houses the kitties' food and water, litter box, kitty condo, our bikes and an old arcade game. It's an old Play Choice 10 that has 10 different Nintendo games from the 80's.

As I started moving stuff around I heard Gidget meowing sort of frantically. Not usual for her. She has a habit of crawling into the bottom of the arcade game, where all of the wires are and where the coin box should be. I just figured she was in there and couldn't get the door open again to get out.

I started calling her name, thinking I could coax her out, but the more I called her, the more she meowed. As I got closer and put my head down by the door (which is almost on the floor) I realized her meows weren't coming from down there, they were coming from higher. So then I figured she was up in the game somewhere.

The more I listened, however, and the more I stood up, the more I realized it sounded like it was coming from directly in front of me. That's when I saw her.

The machine has 2 screens to it, one on top of the other. Somehow, she managed to wedge herself in between the bottom screen and the glass in front of it.

I FREAKED!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was like I was looking at a life size picture of Gidget that had been put under a piece of glass, to hold it in place. But no. It was her! Standing straight up, flattened.

We bought the machine from a friend of ours that owns a vending machine company. The obvious thing to do was call him and ask how to get the glass off, so that we could get her out. But he was at a bar somewhere, drunk out of his mind and had no comprehension of what we were asking him. I'm pretty sure he thought we were trying to tell him that one of the games with an animal in it was stuck on the screen. After a few minutes of talking in circles, we just hung up on him. 15 minutes, and a whole bunch of tears (mine) later, we finally got the top half of the glass off, so that we could get our hand down inside the bottom half of the glass and give her just enough of a nudge so she could wiggle her front paws and head out. I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and helped her pull herself out the rest of the way.

That's when I had a flash of deja vu. Except it was a claw machine. And it was a three year old boy inside. And he didn't seem to be having such a bad time, playing with the SpongeBob Squarepants doll he was trying to get.

Now that the ordeal is over, the cat is out and 110% fine and the game is put back together, I'm finishing my third glass of wine and getting ready to go to bed. I wish I hadn't been so worried that I would have taken some pictures! Heh.

What a night!