A few days ago, a neighbor and her dog stopped by and the dog ended up chasing a cat up a tree behind our house. I heard it happen, but didn't realize truly what was going on, and chalked it off to it being our cat running from the dog.
But later that night we heard crying. We (Richard, Aloka and I) didn't even really take notice until the second day when we realized the crying was not our cat. It was going on continuously and was not coming from the ground.
Richard looked behind our house and saw it, a blur of a cat, waaaaay up high in a big tree we have out back, close to 100 feet tall. The cat was probably 20 feet up it. We figured it would come down soon. But over the day the crying continued, and next day we went out, the cat was now probably 50 or 60 up the tree. Josh was over, and he climbed up and up. But he got to a point where it wasn't safe enough, and the cat was just too high so he came back down.
Next day, now day three, we were all really starting to worry. Besides the fact that we had been listening to meowling for 3 days straight. I couldn't believe this kitty cat was not coming down at all.
Neighbors were starting to take notice, as the meowing could be heard for quite a distance, and I had sent an email to everyone asking if anyone was missing a cat. Nope. No one missing this cat. We were out back for the better part of day 3, calling, coaxing, shaking the food dish. Our neighbors Jerry and Linda walked over and joined in. The cat started getting more excited hearing all the commotion, meowing louder.
Meanwhile, I had left three messages for the fire department, 5 messages for local arborists (one who advertised "pet rescues", ha!), the SPCA, and a local animal communicator. Okay, not the last one...but a lot of messages. As of today, only one person called back, the pet rescue-er. So much for the firemen. Low priority, I guess.
Finally, Jerry, our neighbor and now local hero, got a huge ladder (twice the size of Richards) and ropes and stuff, and climbed up the tree!
Yup, that's Jerry... the black dot over halfway up that tree...
Linda, surprisingly calm and seemingly used to seeing Jerry in daring situations
The on-ground cheering commitee
Boo hoo, sniff! We were all so relieved.
This is one gorgeous (and lucky) cat.
How sweet is that?Nope, it was so sweet and mellow. Siamese mixed with tabby, long hair, skinny and hungry, but other than that, very chill. It let Aloka haul it around, we brought it inside and it made itself right at home, even purring when Aloka manhandled it.
I wished we could have kept it, but our cat would've freaked out if she had known what stowaway we had in her domain (luckily she was still outside at this point). Not to mention, this cat had some serious shedding issues, holy cow. It was in our house for less than an hour and I'm still finding long white fur everywhere.
We brought it over to Jerry and Linda's who were excited about fostering her and maybe even keeping her if no one claimed her. But the moment we arrived in the driveway, she heard their dog Sampson. She clawed me, flying out of my arms and headed straight for the trees! ACK. I dove after her, Aloka was quicker and grabbed her by the tail, and then I grabbed her scruff and chucked her back into the van. Dang.
It all ended up good though, Linda spoke with another neighbor, Marika, who had no pets and agreed to foster her. She also had a suspicion that she knew the cat and had seen her around her land before.
Yup, turns out, the cat knows Marika too. As soon as I pulled up, Ms. Kitty (Aloka had now named her Daisy at this point) jumped out, seemed to almost 'greet' Marika, ate a little food, drank a little water, and took a little cat nap in the shade of her guest house, like she owned the place. Marika thinks she belongs to an unknowing neighbor of hers. Unknowing and oblivious to the fact that their cat almost became dehydrated cat-on-a-stick coyote food.
And here's a couple videos:
Posts
1 comments:
Great story!
Post a Comment