Once upon a time, in the northern kingdom of Auburn, there was a cat named JoJo, who came visiting and wouldn’t go home.

That’s the way I’d write this story if it were a fairy tale. Like all fairy stories, it turned out fine, of course. But getting to the ending took all the endurance, caginess and smarts I am known for.

It went like this: JoJo came, JoJo dashed up to my unfinished second floor, otherwise know as the attic, hid under the flooring and came out only after I went to sleep. Every day for a week, I climbed the stairs and talked with her. I invited her downstairs to visit. I spoke in my gentle voice. Did she come? No, she scampered from rafter to rafter under the flooring.

OK, I reasoned. Let’s put the food in the first-floor kitchen and the litter box in the basement. She’ll have to come down for that. Won’t she?

She did. When I woke, I’d see that little bits of food had disappeared from her dish. Her water dish needed refilling every day. But was she around? No, ma’am. Occasionally, I’d catch a glimpse of her brown tail racing from the basement back to the attic. No visiting. It was disappointing, but not alarming – yet.

JoJo was neither a pet nor company. She was, plain and simple, a moocher in my house. And she ignored me.

I patiently poured food and water and cleaned her box.

Two weeks passed.

I called the friends who had given her to me, and they, too, were disappointed. We all had thought JoJo would be happier in my one-cat home as compared to their two-cat, three-dog home. But, they agreed, it wasn’t working out as planned. So they came to bring her home.

We thought it would be easy. A familiar voice and zip she’d be in their arms and on her way home. Nope. Not JoJo. For the first hour, they called, cajoled and whispered. JoJo wouldn’t budge.

We finally got serious and isolated her between two particular rafters (no small task involving a broom, flashlights and sweat). And just as we thought we had her, she dashed out and bit my friend hard before racing off to a new corner of the attic. Luckily, his tetanus shot was up to date. But we all decided “enough already,” and they went home.

By this time, JoJo had lived in my attic 2 1/2 weeks. What if she used the attic as a litter box, I wondered. The smell? The cleanup? I began to get worried. Besides, every time we tried to catch her, we now were in danger of bites. Plus, my attic flooring is only in the middle of the space. Along the edges where JoJo liked to sleep and hide, were rafters and a thin sheet of plastic. What if we or she fell through the ceiling to the floor below?

My emotions moved up from disappointed to anxious.

Next scene: my son and daughter-in-law came to catch her. Having heard about our previous adventures, they came with gloves. And flashlights and this time, a fan. An hour passed. Ahh, we found her. We isolated her between two rafters with a cat carrier at the end of one. “Shoo. Shoo,” and she dashed toward the carrier, leaped over the top and raced for another hiding spot known only to her. Was this a game? Whose rules?

Three weeks at this point. Now I was getting mad. I had to leave open the basement door, and close all the other doors so she could get to her food and cat box. Whose house is this anyway?

Our next scheme involved tranquilizing JoJo with a few drops of a natural substance in her food and water. Was that a lousy idea! She ate, drank and promptly went to sleep it off. Under the flooring in the attic, of course.

My mood now was total frustration and anger.

I complained to my friends, who commiserated but kept hoping JoJo would somehow decide to visit with me and all would be well. Fat chance!

I got serious then I decided to withhold food. They said, “Sure, try it. She never eats much anyway.” Was that an understatement.

I left the water dish, took away the food and waited for a hungry cat to come out to eat. For a little cat, JoJo has more stamina than I and apparently can survive on water alone. For eight days.

I had a new idea. I tied a long rope from the attic door handle to the first-floor newel post. If she comes down, I reasoned, I can pull the rope and close off the attic. Seemed a good idea, except she only moved around at night and I could never stay awake as long as she could.

Scenes of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison flashed before my eyes. I was beginning to think I’d be arrested for animal abuse.

It was 3 1/2 weeks now. I was out of ideas, patience and any other skill I could think of. My friends were comfortably at their house, nursing their cat bite and not interested in climbing around rafters again.

Who knows about animals? I asked myself. The veterinarian, of course. I went to ask for advice. Call animal control, I was told. Finally, a good idea and a helper to boot.

Enter the animal control officer, stalwart Bentley Rathbun. He brought a Have-a-Heart trap and some smelly food. The idea was for JoJo to go for the food, get snagged in the trap so we could transport her, trap and all, to her very own home.

I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to get the food and not set off the trap. Both Bentley and I were puzzled by this. Did she reach through the cage itself to snag a piece of food? We didn’t know. But the trap didn’t go off. She simply ate and then threw up right beside the trap. I cleaned it up. And JoJo? She went back to her home among the rafters.

I was getting philosophical now. Perhaps I’d just have a cat in my attic, permanently. It was now one month of JoJo the cat in the attic.

Well, you guessed it. Her actual arrest occurred anticlimactically. Maybe she did get hungry enough. Maybe she just got tired of the rafters. Maybe she’s on a monthly schedule. All I know is that one morning, when I came home, she was (in the daytime) in my living room.

I jerked the door handle rope to close off the attic and went in search of the racing JoJo. It didn’t take long to find her, all warm and brown and fuzzy, staring out at me from under the sofa.

I called my friends and they came with her cat carrier. We moved the sofa and, true to her real affections, she let them pick her up, pet her and slide her into the carrier. They say she’s happy to be home, very affectionate and up all day long. Go figure.

So that was it. All I had to do was return the Have-a-Heart trap to the police station and the adventure was over.

Funny, though. Perversely and inextricably, I miss the darned cat.

Sarah Andersen lives in Auburn.