Trapped: My night in a Paris toilet with a cat named Lion 🦁

The very true story of my (mis)adventures as a traveling entrepreneur.

It felt like two hours, though I’m not entirely sure. Naturally, I wasn’t wearing a watch and didn’t have my iPhone. Given that it was the middle of the night, the rest of the apartment and neighboring apartments were silent, and I didn’t have the sounds of the city to give me any clues about what time it was either.

I could feel my eyes getting heavy, not to mention the airplane sized bathroom was heating up. Even the cat kept dozing on and off, alternating between sleeping on a shelf and curling up on my lap.

It was at that point that I decided to put a towel on the bathroom floor and try and fall asleep. My rational was that if I could sleep as many hours as possible, it was less hours awake — waiting, wondering, and hoping that someone would find me.

I arrived in Paris after speaking at a conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Paris. One of my favorite cities in the world. To add to the excitement, I’d never been to Paris in the spring!

I stopped off at the office to meet a few team members in person, got the keys and headed to the apartment where out of town team members stay. I was informed there was a cat at the apartment, Lion, and I was asked to check on him. No problem.

After dropping my bags off, meeting the cat, Lion, and doing some work, I headed out to enjoy the hot summer evening in Paris. It was gorgeous, the banks of the Seine river were lined with people drinking wine, having picnics, and enjoying the weather and company — the picture perfect scene you imagine when you think of springtime in Paris. I was having one of those moments in life where you think, “how did I get so lucky”.

I completely lost track of time sitting there and wandering the streets. Before I knew it, it was 11:30 at night. So I headed back to the apartment, did some work, and got ready for bed. I walked into the toilet room and as I closed the door, the cat, Lion, catapulted into the room, though I’m still not sure why or how he leapt in. It was literally as though someone had flung the cat into the bathroom, on cue. At that exact moment, the door closed.

So there I was, with the cat, in the toilet room. Strange, but ok.

Ready to leave the toilet room, I put my hand on the door, pulled, and nothing happened. I noticed a lock and a key on the door, so I turned the key. Nothing. I turned the key again. Nothing. Next, I noticed what looked like a giant screw above the keyhole. Turns out, this is where a door handle should have been. And that’s when I realized, I had a problem.

I remember laughing to myself, and the cat, and thinking how funny this was and how good it would feel to lay in bed in a few minutes after I got the door unjammed. Did I mention I’d been up since 4:30 am because I’d flown in from Portugal that morning?

As I sat there on the toilet, I took a little time out. I wanted to assess the situation.

“I’m in a toilet room, with a cat. I’m alone in the apartment (as far as I know). It’s 1:30am in the morning.”

Next, I looked around the toilet room to see what tools I had to work with, and well, it was limited: 2 rolls of toilet paper, 3 pink towels, a navy face cloth, 3 wood shelves, a metal toilet bowl cleaner, and one toilet bowl bleach things that you hang inside the toilet. Quality items that eventually proved useless in my endeavors.

I remember coming up with three strategies to escape.

First, I wrapped a towel around the broken door knob to try and form a handle so I could actually turn the knobless handle. This, was useless. The screw like thing where the handle would have been didn’t turn. And after a few minutes of trying, I developed big blisters on my fingers. So I moved on.

Next, I decided to put other objects into the keyhole to try and unlock the door. I tried two objects, the first attempt was with my David Yurman bracelet. It’s the type of bracelet that you can bend, so I bent it as horizontal as it would go and put it into the keyhole. Again, this was hopeless and in my head I thought “do you really want to risk breaking this bracelet” and at that point in the ordeal, I wasn’t quite ready to sacrifice the bracelet.

The other object I tried to use was the plastic bleach thing that you can attach to the inside of toilet bowl. But as you can guess, it did nothing.

My final strategy was to jiggle the door from the bottom, the gap between the floor and the door, as well as throw all my body weight at the door to try and break the door down. This last resort took a lot of thought.

Maybe it was the “nice” Canadian in me, but I was a bit concerned about breaking the door. I was in this apartment, I hadn’t met the people who live there, and it looked like a very new expensive renovation. So I was honestly a bit concerned about breaking the door!

I probably sat on the toilet for a good 15 minutes debating the pros and cons of breaking the door down.

Eventually I concluded that if I did break the door and the people were upset, I would pay for the door. So, I then began what was probably 10 minutes of launching the entire right side of my body at the door towards the keyhole. It was loud. My hip hurt. The cat looked at me strange. And it resulted in zero progress. I even thought maybe it would wake up an upstairs neighbor. But the French must be deep sleepers because there was no acknowledgement or response from neighbors.

After three failed strategies over what I guess was maybe 90 minutes, I started to accept the fact that I was trapped, in a toilet room, in the middle of the night, with a cat, in Paris.

This began the second phase of my night trapped in the toilet room. And it was at this point that I started to consider the worst case scenario.

The next day I was scheduled to hold office hours with 3 companies at The Family. My first meeting was scheduled to begin at 2:00pm and I figured that if I didn’t show up, people may think the metro was late, or I was lost, or I read my calendar incorrectly. So I was hopeful that one of the office hours people might notice around 4:00pm. Best case scenario they would call my phone, I wouldn’t answer, and they might send someone to the apartment by 5:00 pm, which was in 15 hours.

At this point, I did a quick reality check and thought through all the stories I’d heard about people surviving for 5 days after a car wreck with just river water, or hikers being stranded in the desert.

I took comfort in knowing that I had a toilet and a faucet, and that neither I nor the cat would go thirsty. The one small unknown was the cat’s litter-box situation. I couldn’t remember seeing a litter-box, but I hadn’t looked for one either! Maybe it was one of those cats that was trained to use the toilet, how chic. Thankfully, I never had to find out.

The reality of a rescue around 5:00pm, 15 hours from this point, started to set in.

What if no one came at 5:00pm? The worst, worst case scenario I thought through was that someone would eventually suspect a problem if I didn’t show up for meetings at The Family’s offices in Berlin the next day.

Remaining hopeful, I focused on 15 hours. I’ve been in some crazy situations in the past. I run marathons .I know that mental toughness can carry you through a lot of situations. So I locked it in, 15 hours. Out of my control. Just have to deal with it.

I made a strategic decision. No one would hear my cries for help, in French and English, in the middle of the night. So my best action was to go to sleep. If I could sleep as many hours, it was less hours I’d be awake thinking.

I took the pink towels and put them on the floor. But I quickly realized that the toilet room was so small that I couldn’t actually lay down. So I kind of curled my body literally around the toilet and tried to sleep. That began a continual rotation of laying on the floor, sitting on the toilet with my head resting on the sink, and sitting on the toilet with my feet up against the wall. Over and over and over.

Between moments of closing my eyes, I passed the time by talking to the cat.

I wasn’t sure if it’s name was Lion (in English) or Leee-OH-nnn (in French). So I switched back and forth. He didn’t seem to favor one over the other.

I also considered what I had possibly done in the past few days or weeks to possibly deserver this misfortune. Was this karma? What was the symbolism? Why was I being locked up? What did this mean? Was this some type of forced “time-out” because I needed to learn an important life lesson?

Da-da-da-dahhhhh.

DA-DA-DA-dahhhhh.

DA-DA-DA-DAHHHH.

That was my alarm on my iPhone going off at 6:30am. Fantastic. Now I thought the alarm would go off until the battery died. But there must be some period of time when it goes off on it’s own because after what I’m guessing was 40 minutes, the alarm stopped. I will never use that alarm sound again.

Morning. People waking up. Taking showers. Cars on the street. Birds chirping. People walking down the stairs of the adjoining apartments. I could hear it all. Surely someone would hear me. I began yelling in French and English:

“Hello, can anyone hear meeeeeee?”

“Est-ce-qu’il ya quelqu’un ICI?”
[Is there anyone HERE?]

“JE SUIS ICI A SALLE DE BAIN. M’AIDEZ!!!!”
[I am in the toilet, HELP?]

I began forcefully banging the door, again. I thought that for sure someone would hear the sound of the door, it was loud. So loud that the cat was now curled up behind the toilet looking at bit perplexed. But the banging was not loud enough.

I could hear person after person, feet going down the stairs of other apartments, going outside to fresh air and fresh croissants.

And there I was. Trapped. Sitting on the floor of a toilet room, my black pants now a unique shade of tan given the many hours the cat crawled, sat, and slept on my lap.

Poor kitty — Lion even tried to help. He started meowing a lot and was putting his paws on the door, scratching up and down the door. Then he got smart, like me, and tried to put his paws under the door. But alas, neither of us could get enough force to free the door from underneath.

I went back to sleep.

Some time later, I heard construction workers. I could hear a saw, so I knew they must be close. In the moments of silence between construction noise, I began my chorus of yelling in French and English. I alternated with a good 60 seconds of simply banging the door over and over.

“Bonjour??”

Was it true? Was I finally hearing a woman’s voice?

“Oui, je suis ici au salle de bain. M’aidez!!!!!”
[Yes, I am here in the bathroom. Help me!!!!!]

I head her feet coming up the stairs. We exchange words in French. I told her that I was trapped in the toilet room since about 1:30am. I asked what time it is and she tells me it’s 9:00am.

I told her the cat was with me and that we were ok. She said she was going to call some people and come right back.

The lady, who turned out to be the cleaning lady, called the woman who lives at the house. But she was in Portugal speaking at a conference. So you can only imagine her reaction when the cleaning lady calls her at 9:00am to tell her that a women is stuck in the toilet room since 1:30am. So many questions.

FINALLY. It was going to end.

I think a few actual tears came down my face as I was finally able to take down the strong face that I’d put on to psych myself up for possibly another 8 hours in the toilet room! Willpower is necessary. Mental toughness is an amazing thing. But once you don’t need it, reality takes over.

So there I was again, sitting on the toilet, with the cat, telling him that we were going to get out! Partial tears of joy and partial tears of fear from the previous 7 hours!

The lady returned with a man to help. He couldn’t get the door to unlock. We chatted a bit and I told them that I spoke a little French, but Canadian French. And he said, “Oh you are Canadian, you are very patient” and I said back in French “WELL I AM LOSING MY PATIENCE!” to which there was a bit of laughter.

Moments later, they came back to tell me they were going to pass cookies under the door.

They thought I must be very hungry and had found individually wrapped cookies downstairs.

One by one, cookies starting appearing in the tiny space between the bottom of the door and the floor. One, two, three, four, five, six. Wonderful little shortbread type cookies. They were delicious. But I didn’t share with the cat.

Then, I looked at the size of the cookie and realized my iPhone was about the same height, so I yelled to the people and instructed them to go get my phone from the bed and pass it under. After removing the case, it just barely fit! I knew I had to document the misadventures so I started to make an Instagram story.

While I was eating the cookies and giving the cat some water from my hands, I heard the people talking and debating if they would call the fire department given that they weren’t making any progress.

I think they actually did call the fire department and it was going to take two hours. They didn’t want to tell me that though!

Sidenote: Remarkably, I have actually been rescued by the New York City Fire Department because I was trapped in an elevator.

Actually, trapped in the same elevator twice in one day. But the first time, I had a dog with me and some colleagues were able to get me out. Later in the day, I got stuck along and the FDNY came to my rescue, trucks and all.

The men finally removed the lock, doorknob, and some of the wood from the door and the first thing they said when the door opened was:

“il est tres chaud!!”
[it’s very hot]

To which I said:

“JE SAIS”
[I KNOW]

And then he gave me a great big hug!

From the moment the lady heard me until the moment I was freed it was about an hour. In total, I was trapped into the toilet room with the cat for 8.5 HOURS.

The people who rescued me were so nice. They made me coffee and fed me more cookies at the kitchen table.

I think word spread fairly quickly because for the rest of the day, let alone week, everyone I met in Paris and Berlin was asking me about it. It became a great intro for a talk I gave in Berlin and for dinner conversations with new friends.

As much as I would love to draw a bunch of design and startup lessons out of this. Let’s just leave it as a hilarious misfortune that ended well. Although this does have me considering getting an Apple Watch — I think there’s finally a good use case for it beyond fitness tracking!

I would like to thank everyone at TheFamily who helped get me out at the apartment as well as everyone behind the scenes making phone calls and tracking the appropriate people down!

Thank you for welcoming me to your family, a memorable week, and many new friends!

LATER THAT DAY …
After heading to the office to do office hours all afternoon, I was exhausted!

I walked home along the Seine river, and the most amazing burger and wine for dinner, headed back to the apartment, and naturally, Lion would not leave my side 😻🦁.

Then, I woke up at 5am the next morning to head to Berlin!