Our rental house has a couple of pull out pantries in the kitchen. They are quite nice and pull out to reveal 5 shelves each of the kitchen goodies that we use fairly regularly. Such things as ketchup and mustard, tuna packs, soups, various pastas, cereals, canned goods and you get the idea. When closed, the pantries are flush with the walls. The kitchen has been outfitted like most British kitchen so that everything looks like it is the same type of cabinet with doors and handles and such (including the refrigerator and freezer which really confused me when first looking at ads for houses, thinking there were no refrigerators in the kitchens). Anyway, I digress.
On the bottom shelf of one of the pull out pantries are our different pastas including a currently open package of spaghetti. For several days now, I have sometimes come into the kitchen to find broken pieces of spaghetti on the floor in several places. The first couple of times, I figured I had not closed the door tightly or that when opening and closing it, I had inadvertently broken off some piece of spaghetti that was hanging out of the package. Just pick up the broken pieces and toss them in the bin.
The third time it happened, I began to get a bit suspicious that something more was brewing in my pantry and kitchen that I was not privy to observe. Again, I picked up the pieces, tossed them but now, I opened the pantry to check the spaghetti. Nope, no pieces were sticking half out of the package. No pieces were loose in the pantry. Hmmm. mystery. So I am now alert to checking for spaghetti on the floor in the mornings OR the afternoons when I enter the kitchen. It was becoming more frequent. Now there are scattered pieces of broken spaghetti on the floor about 3 or 4 times a week. Each time, I clean up the floor, open the pantry, check the spaghetti package and then move on to the rest of my day. Why, you ask, did I not MOVE the spaghetti package to another location? Because now I am suspecting our daughter's cat. He is way too clever for his own good and really likes to explore everything and get into anything he possibly can, just to see if he can. Has he learned to open and close the pantry? It seems rather heavy to me. He has learned to open certain doors in the house that do not close tightly without an effort. He knows which doors these are too and when he finds them open, he always checks them to see if he can shove them open. He hates closed doors. I'd like to catch him at it!
I test the pantry now each time I pass through the kitchen. Nope, it's fairly solid and heavy, loaded as it is with canned goods and such. I am certain that he is not strong enough to wiggle underneath it and pull it open. Ah HA! Light dawns. I reach down under the edge of the cabinetry - the part that is really a facade on the front of the pantry so it looks like the rest of the kitchen. If I reach as far under as I can, I feel the spaghetti! OMG. The mystery is solved I believe. He is going under the door to grab out bits of spaghetti, not to eat them but to bat them around on the floor late at night when he's awake by himself and feeling the need of some relief from boredom. The little scamp. I've gone through almost half a package of spaghetti trying to solve this mystery but I am confident I have discovered the culprit, even without actually seeing him do it. My two cats are both too old and lazy to be bothered. And yes, I have now moved the spaghetti and put a sad end to his play in the dark of the kitchen.
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