Stupid Cat (Or, How I Grew 20 Gray Hairs in One Afternoon)

Here is a non-food post. No recipe this time…..but there is a story.

On my Facebook feed, I saw that this happened a year ago.  I am still a bit traumatized by the whole experience, so I thought I’d share, lol.

Some backstory: My sister wanted a cat.  She wasn’t allowed to have a cat in her dorms, so she offered my house as a temporary lodging. (Mind you, I have never wanted a cat, lol – I can barely keep up with the two kids I have.)

This cat is officially named Zenobia, but my term of endearment is “Stupid Cat”.  I call her that because she is aloof, and likes to do stupid things. Like run outside before I have a chance to open the door all the way. Anyway, on to the story:

_____________________________________________________________________

March 31, 2017

Was anyone else busy trying to get a cat out of a tree yesterday? No?? Just me? Alrighty then…

We could not find the cat. We looked up, we looked down, we looked around. We looked outside, in all the usual hiding spots.

Then, when Girl Child and I got into the car to pick Boy Child up, we heard her meowing. Hm. It sounded really close, so we looked under the car, behind the bushes, in the garage, and didn’t see her. So we left for Boy Child. When we got back, we heard the meowing again.

We looked up.

We looked at each other, then looked up again. We tried to call her down. I put out her food dish. We shook the bag of treats. But she couldn’t get down. And the cat kept meowing.

 

I said, “forget it” and went back inside because my brother said that theoretically, cats can climb down and I figured she’d eventually get motivated enough to come down.

Of course, that didn’t set well with Boy Child and Girl Child. They kept coming back to me – while I was trying to get work done – to ask me “aren’t we going to do anything?” to tell me “she is going to hate us for leaving her there” and “she will blame us if we don’t get her down” and “she’s probably cold and hungry”. And the cat kept meowing.

I looked up info online, I read that cats should eventually get down on their own. And that fire departments don’t get cats out of trees like you see on TV because that diverts resources from actual human risky situations.

My sister suggested that the cat was just trying to get away from Girl Child. And reminded us that cats are supposed to be able to jump and land on their feet. Our personal Dr. Spencer Reid, AKA my brother, gave us statistics on how far cats can jump down and survive.

I couldn’t do anything. Except leave her food out and the kitchen door open. And the cat kept meowing.

Husband Person said that he would use the ladder and try when he got home from work.

A while later, we heard a knock on the door. It was our neighbor from across the street. She asked me if we had a cat. LOL. Girl Child told her “we don’t but my Khalto (aunt) does”

Our neighbor called her friend, whose son works in animal rescue. Her friend asked his son and his son said, “leave food and treats out” Well, that was helpful. Another neighbor got out of his house and she calls him over to ask if he could help us get the stupid cat out of the tree that I hate being there anyway. He said, “show her some food” and “she’ll get down when she’s hungry enough or when it starts raining”. That was also helpful.

Then our neighbor offers her ladder, I told her that we had a telescoping one. Then Husband Person got home while we were comparing ladder sizes. He took out our ladder and went to the deck. It was too short. Our neighbor called her husband to bring their ladder over. He came, so now we have two ladders, both of which are too short. And the cat kept meowing.

Then our neighbor from behind our house brought over his ladder. It was longer than the previous two, but it was still too short. Then the guys came up with an idea to put a ladder on the deck railing. And for Husband Person to climb it. Um…. eeek!

Well, of course he did go up, with the other two neighbors holding the ladder. It didn’t work.

Our neighbor went back to his house and got another ladder…. which made 4 ladders total. We got the cat’s crate and he tried to hold it up to her while he was on top of the ladder, but nope. She wasn’t having it. All the while, the cat kept meowing. And it got dark.

So, our neighbor went back to his house and got a tall pole and a rope. He tied the crate to the top of the pole and climbed up the ladder, on to the tree and held this heavy crate at the end of the tall pole and tried to coax the cat into it, giving me a heart attack that we were going to have an accident on my deck because of a stupid cat.

I went and called the local volunteer fire department and told them that we have a cat stuck in a tree and tried and tried many things and it wasn’t coming down. He took our info and said to call 911 so they could dispatch. All the while, the guys outside kept trying different risky looking things to get the cat down.

Then, the fire guys came. They said that they don’t usually do this because it wasn’t risk to human life (but if they were there seeing the guys trying to get the cat out, they would have realized that it was) … They got to the deck and looked at all the ladders and the rigged crate on the pole and the chair on top of the table. And they laughed. And they said, “you obviously tried everything”

 One of them (obviously the head guy, because he said he didn’t trust the others to go up to a not-quite-so-stable tree) went up and tried to coax the cat down. She didn’t come down. And kept meowing.

He had to come down, adjust the ladder, and go back up, saying “I’m too old for this”. He coaxed her to his side of the branch and tried to carry her. She scratched him. He cussed her. I went inside with Neighbor Lady so he wouldn’t hear us laughing. And I decided that if she didn’t come down with him, she deserved to stay up there until she found her own way down.

 He finally got her in his arms.

He said, “take a picture for the newspaper”.

 

We brought the neighbors inside from the cold deck and we all had hot tea and laughed at Stupid Cat.

 Stupid cat went inside and acted like nothing happened.