We had a neighbour a few years back who had a lovely, friendly Burmese cat which had a thing about exploring cars. At the time we were living about 50kms outside Wellington in Kapiti. Not hard to guess what happened, but we had some work done on the house and the tradesman finished and headed home to Wellington. A few km's from home said cat suddenly wakes up (he was in the back of the van) and nearly caused a crash as it decided it needed some fuss and tried to climb the steering wheel. This cat would also quite happily follow us for a walk down the beach and would even paddle in the sea (I think it thought it was a dog).

My best cat-where-a-cat-shouldn't-be story is when our cat recently went missing for a couple of days. Turns out he'd got into the neighbour's shed, just before the neighbour went on holiday. As we naturally had no key or contact details getting the cat out required sneakily breaking into the shed, a feat which may or may not have been accomplished with skeleton keys. I want to make it clear that this is not an activity people in my family typically engage in, but with the neighbour gone for several weeks there wasn't any other option.

One night my wife used the microwave and left the door open, and our Birman cat Alfie decided it was a warm place to sleep. We have photos.

My boy loves to explore but is a bit of a whimp due to being a rescue cat. He disappeared for 4 days and after scouring the roads for a pancake and contacting all the local vets, at 3am we were awoken to a knock at the door. The neighbour had been up marking some papers and heard a miaow coming from underneath him. As it turned out my boy had managed to get under his house and hide right up the other end from the entry. So this is how I know I have the best neighbour, he didn't waste a second to get under the house in his PJ's, climbed over mud & clay into a very small space on his tummy to rescue my poor frightened boy and get him home for some food and much needed cuddles.

There was a few moments I was sure I had lost my mind as sometimes I could hear him miaow but searched everywhere and just couldn't find him. Thankfully I managed to keep my cat and my mind!

Anyone with a cat knows that they like high places, so it comes as no surprise to know that my moggy likes to jump on the bench, and from there onto the top of the cupboards in the kitchen, with his favourite spot being to lie across the top of the pantry, where he can check things out if the doors are opened. Now he has a nephew, 11 months younger, who loves to do just want his uncle does, so one day when I wasn't looking he followed his uncle. Now some cats get rather territorial about their favourite spots, so I don't know if it was an accident, or if he was pushed, but behind the pantry end is a lovely gap that drops almost 2 metres right to the floor, and 1 metre across, but only about 15cm wide, and with no access to it any other way except from above (and of course noone ever thought we needed to close off because we hadn't realised it was there!). And yes, you guessed it, this is where the little guy ended up. You can imagine that it took me a while to figure out where the distressed meows were coming from, and then the dilemma of how to get him out! Almost 2 hrs were then spent trying various things like dangling towells, and dropping a beam of wood at an angle down the gap to try to get him to climb out, all without success. Even the older cat came to investigate all the activity, with a great show of concern for his nephew. Finally we decided we were going to have to make an emergency call and get a hole cut in the back of the pantry cupboard. Firstly though, after getting really concerned as his meows got weaker and weaker, knowing it was getting rather hot down in the gap, we decided to try dripping water down on him in an attempt to get some liquid in him and/or cool him down. Never ceases to amaze how fast a cat can move, and what it can climb, when it feels water being splashed on it! Needless to say he has never ventured on top of the cupboards again, but we can still never get the other one off them!

Many years ago, a neighbour in the area where we were living could NOT find their cat. They went around the neighbourhood calling its name. A few of us helped. As we approached their house we could hear a faint mewing, and we tracked it down to their new concrete front steps. They had placed them that day and then plastered in the side openings. Yep, that's right, with the curious cat inside!

A number of years back, my boyfriend (now husband) had a kitten who loved to climb trees, we just didn't know it. One day she disappeared but we kept hearing her meows from a distance. We searched for two days scouring every inch of his house & the surrounding area until I happened to look up in the dark one night and there upbove me, a fair distance up in a tree were two glowing eyes. So my suffering boyfriend risked life, limb and a goog scratching (she attached herself to him impressively) to get her down. This happened twice before she learned how to get down herself!

Our problem was not our cat, but the neighbours. We were renovating - extending the lounge to include an office, it was all framed and the outside cladding on and the council inspector would not let us put the ceiling in on the inside as he said it needed to dry out. So the builder put cardboard over the framing to keep a bit of the cold out for us. Later that evening there was a god almighty crash as the neighbours cat came crashlanding out of the ceiling, he had walked on the cardboard and it gave way. I simply took him next door and asked if they had lost something !!!!

The cat from Greece joined the police, but MY cat likes to hide in boxes.

I used to run a boarding cattery some years ago. Had an older lady come and pick her 2 cats up, in seperate cages, and travel home as usual. We lived in the country so it was 40 mins later I received a call saying was I missing a cat from the cattery. Unbeknown to me one of the other boarder cats ( a very cute birman with a plus plus purrsonality ) had got in the cage before her own cat went in. They sat together for the whole journey in a medium sized enclosed cage and had a wonderful car trip back to the ladies house. The birman appeared out of the cage once it was taken inside and proceeded to stroll around like it owned the place. Oh my goodness I was so embarassed this happened and when the owner came to get her precious birman a week or so later I had written a poem for her all about Coco's big adventure. The owner told me the birman got up to all sorts at home so this was of no surprise to her. She took away a copy of the poem and as far as I know had it framed.