The Case of the Missing Thud

I had turned in for the night and heard a faint, high-pitched meow.

It didn't sound familiar, so my first thought was "it must be Thud."
She' s very quiet, aside from having a room-shaking purr when she's
around Giovanni, so her meow isn't something I'd recognize. It occurred
to me that I hadn't seen her for a while.

I got up, turned on the light, and started looking for Thud. My wife
was watching TV, and thought she hadn't seen Thud for a couple of hours.

I kept calling her, which was perfectly useless because she won't ever
condescend to even look up at me when I'm calling her from three feet
away. I went all over the house, looking under furniture, in closets -
no sign of Thud.

In a panic, I started opening all the doors to the outside, calling her.
If she got out, I'd be in a heap of trouble because she can't be
picked up and normally runs if I get near her. No reflective eyeballs
were in the yard. I returned to the inside and kept looking everywhere.

Then, by a stroke of luck, I walked by my big paper shredder. It has a
4x8" opening so one can reach into the receptacle to remove the shredded
paper. And there, looking up at me through the opening, was Thud!
Apparently she had jumped down into the bin, and didn't feel confident
about getting out.

So, given the captive audience, I gave her a minute or two of head rubs.
I lifted the heavy shredding unit off of the bin, and out jumped Thud,
happy to be free.