By MADELINE REIDA

Staff writer

Marion police were met June 14 with an unusual sight of two young girls crouched down by a storm drain on the west side of 5th St. in Marion.

A witness called officers out of fear that the girls would fall down the drain, but it turned out that the girls merely were trying to lure their housecat out of the storm sewer a block from their home.

“He gets out through the double windows on our second floor,” Dan Madgwick, the girls’ father, said. “The air pressure causes the upper doors to jiggle, then when they open, he’ll escape.”

This isn’t the 8-year-old tom’s first adventure into the drain. Madgwick believes it to be the second or third time.

“You know cats,” he said. “They’re curious about the outdoors, then when they get out, they want back in.”

With the promise of food, the cat eventually got out of the sewer and returned home a few days later, possibly smelling a bit funky.