Our daughter was planning to leave for a couple of days, a perfect time to replace soaked wall covering and leaky shower head.. Her house was in town so, supplies were handy.
“Just be careful not to leave the cats get out when you go through the door. You’ll probably never see the one cat, he’s shy and will most likely stay under the bed, see you in a couple.”
Day 1 – crawl under the house and shut the water off
Open the wall and replace bad plumbing
Day 2 – install new wall covering and apply new finish, crawl under the house and turn water back on.
“Hey, that doesn’t look too bad for ‘old Dad!’ and it’s finished ½ hour ahead of time too!”
She was right about the one cat, I never did see him.
I left and daughter came home. The first thing she did was call her cats, only one came.
Oh, Oh! Could the shy cat have slipped out when I was bringing supplies in?
When our daughter called “kitty, kitty” again, she heard a faint response coming from the other room but when she went into the other room, the faint Meow seemed to be coming from the other room. Yes, you guessed it, the Meow was coming from between the rooms, The uncanny realization soon revealed it’s self beyond any shadow of doubt. The ‘shy one’ had become curious and had gotten himself closed up inside the newly finished shower wall!
“OH CATS, now what?”
I’m using this true story as the test plot for the power of suspense. By now, a trace of suspense should have been ignited, can it stay powered up until Monday when I plan to finish the story?
How strong is suspense? Will you come back to the trapped cat story?