I had noticed for about a day Kip was acting weird around our fireplace. He's a much better mouser than Softball, who is more of a catnip and dogtail hunter than a mouser. I also heard scuttling, and I knew something was around, but I though it was a mouse underneath the wood stove platform.
Finally, it got really noisy, and, on a lark (sorry) I looked inside the stove. Here was this poor guy, probably massively dehydrated and confused.
I went to get a fitted sheet to corral him, but he flew out into our laundry room, and I opened the back door, and he tooled right off the Rosebud river, probably to go get a drink.