Cat owner Julee Balko got a surprise when she discovered that the reason her bathroom door wouldn’t open was because her two mischievous kittens had locked themselves inside!
Balko’s discovery led to some hilarious footage of the cheeky kitties, which she captured by sliding her phone under the bathroom door.
Locked out
While unsupervised inside her apartment’s bathroom, Balko’s two tabby kittens Dandelion and Bumble had somehow opened a drawer and inadvertently made it so that the door couldn’t open.
Dandelion and Bumble had only just joined the Balko family when they undertook their little misadventure in the bathroom.
Julee and her family had recently moved into a new apartment in Sammamish, Washington, and adopted the two little bundles of fun when they made the move.
Balko explained to Newsweek that when she discovered that the kittens had commandeered the bathroom, she didn’t want to have to undertake any drastic actions to get them out, she explained:
“We were only two weeks into our new home when this happened, which is why breaking down the door wasn’t so appealing to me.”
Caught in the act
Although Balko believed that she had done a good job in preparing the apartment for the new kittens, she quickly realized that these naughty kitties could find mischief anywhere, no matter how many precautions she took. Balko told Newsweek:
“I thought we did a great job of kitten-proofing the bathroom until one day I went to open it and couldn’t.”
While trying to figure out how to fix the predicament of the locked bathroom and discover how it became locked in the first place, Balko’s husband came up with a clever plan. Julee explained:
“My husband, James Alvarez, had the bright idea to put the phone under the door to try to figure out what was blocking it.”
And so, with the camera of the video recording, the couple slid the phone halfway under the door and allowed it to record what was happening inside.
After they had pulled the phone back out and saw what their cheeky kitties were up to, they were left in stitches. Balko shared:
“When we saw the drawer and kitten looking directly at us – we burst out laughing.”
Time to come out!
Once they realized that it was an open drawer that was keeping the kittens trapped inside, the couple tried to do all they could to close the drawer from the outside.
Unfortunately, Dandelion and Bumble were not interested in helping with the delicate operation and seemed to be getting a lot of amusement from thwarting the couple’s attempts to free them. Balko explained:
“We tried sliding different things under the door to close the drawer, and the kittens thought it was so fun to bat whatever we put under.
Sticks, long pliers, hangers, basically any thin object from around our house that my kids and I could find that would fit in the crack of the door or underneath.”
Released at last
After many failed attempts Julie Balko and her husband finally got the drawer closed and released the kittens from the bathroom, in the time it had taken to complete the rescue mission, Balko had taken to social media to share the kitten’s escapades. As she explained to Newsweek:
“It took us over an hour to get the drawer closed and free the kittens. My husband and I would take turns trying to close the drawer, and I’d get bored waiting for my turn – so I decided to tweet about it. The rest is history.”
A naughty and adorable pair
Once the images of the kitten’s cheeky antics hit social media, viewers fell in love with the pair and couldn’t get enough of the pictures that showed them caught in the act of locking their parents out of the bathroom!
Julee Balko has shared that little Dandelion and Bumble won’t be pulling the same stunt again as she has now taken steps to stop the devious duo from being able to lock the door, saying:
“Our cabinets are now taped shut. Also, yes, as many people pointed out, it’s a terrible bathroom design.”
