like a cat scaling the wall

[Jane]

Murphy's sitting in the office room with me, cleaning himself. A few hours earlier we had a little scare with him that started out innocently enough: Murphy is an indoor cat but just like any young adolescent 1-year-old cat, he was curious about the outside and always stood on the ledge near our door or just in front of the door whenever we were leaving or coming into the house. This morning Ed had to leave to go to work and was backing out of our garage, so I thought I'd be helpful and close the garage door for him. Since I was holding Murphy, I did not think much of it to go those few steps and close it while still holding him in my arm. Boy, was that a false assessment of the situation! As soon as I pulled the garage door, Murphy went into a frenzied shock, jumping out of my arms and into the garage. The panic had him running all over the place, but because I was between him and the garage door, he luckily decided against running out of the garage. So instead, he proceeded to literally run up the walls. Not once, twice, but three times! I'd say he was halfway up the wall ( a good 5 feet!) before he got back down. That was followed by some super jumps all over to the back of the garage (a narrow pathway that was crammed with our summer outdoor furniture, from where he mewled loudly (he usually possesses a very timid and high pitched meeo sound). Eddy ran towards the back and called him, and to our surprise, he crouched towards us and let him pick him up. His claws were still stretched out in utter fear as Ed carried him back inside, from where he tore like the devil was behind him up into our bedroom. He didn't dare to come back downstairs for a couple of hours, but now, later in the afternoon, he seems to be over it, although I can still catch him cast a suspicious look every now and then when there is an unexpected noise. Man o man. I think all we felt was absolute panic but now, I wish we had a camera so we could have recorded because - quite honestly, I doubt anyone is going to believe us that our cat ran up the wall.

p.s. apparently it does happen with some other cats.. so imagine our murphy doing this, but not on a corner wall and doing this in about 10 times the speed.