Once I named a damncat for Ricky Swindle when my wife and I found the kitten lodged inside the front coil spring of my auto, apparently unable to escape.

We were at Annie Glenn’s Bed and Breakfast on Eureka Street and across the intersection from Swindle’s tire shop. Had I not been able to extricate the creature on my own, my next plan was to carefully drive the short distance to get Swindle’s help. Fortunately I was able to snatch the kitten from between the coils without any travel or further assistance.

But we named him Ricky Swindle anyway.

The damncat’s about three years old now, having been neutered, thoroughly domesticated and placed himself generally in charge of the house on Eureka Street. That’s quite different from the other umpteen damncats there that are all feral and only recognize the hand that feeds them if the hand is holding a pan of food at the moment.

Ricky thinks his run of the house includes the attic. Any time the door to the attic steps is opened, he gets the urge to run up those stairs.

The house on Eureka was built about 1910. The attic is fully floored — just one big room with high clearance at the center. When I was growing up it I saw it as a  wonderland of trunks filled with fascinating artifacts and surprises. My grandfather’s Army uniform from World War I was there, complete with hard leather “puttees.”

Another trunk contained my dad’s Army uniform from World War II. It was all quite fascinating then. Now when I go into that attic I just think that someday, somebody is going to have to deal with all that junk.

The attic is also suspected as being the primary abode of Miss Minnie, the ghost whose residence there predates anyone from our family. She’s harmless but loves to pull pranks and bears the blame for whatever occurs there with no apparent cause.

Whenever, for instance, the row of folded-up chairs leaning against each other in the dining room start sliding until they crash to the floor, we know that Miss Minnie is at it again.

So it was that Ricky went bounding up the stairs on Monday when Annie-Glenn  opened the door to retrieve something behind it. And then he was gone.

Usually he comes back after a couple of hours, meowing to get back through the door. At first I thought he may have somehow exited onto the roof and found his way to the yard, but when I returned there Monday night with rain coming down and no Ricky, I knew I had to look in the attic.

He wasn’t hard to find. Once I climbed to the top of the stairs I could hear his faint but worried meows. Following the sound, I walked, then crawled to a chimney at the edge of the house. Behind the chimney there was no flooring but an open space all the way to lower floor. I had never seen the space before nor even suspected it was there.

No doubt Miss Minnie knew and no doubt Miss Minnie had decided to teach him a lesson about the fatal effects curiosity can have on damncats. Ricky stood on a small ledge about halfway up the chimney, unable escape by jumping or climbing.

Removing a couple of the attic flooring boards allowed me to reach far enough to the highest point he was able to reach by climbing. After a couple of attempts I grabbed the nape of his neck pulled him out. He casually sauntered off in an attempt to regain his dignity.

He may have regained his dignity, but he remains no more wary of that attic than before the plunge into Miss Minnie lair. Only last night when I opened the door to the attic to return a broom to its storage hook on the inside of the door, Ricky charged past me, determined to return to the setting of his recent adventure.