March 1, 2019: Cat Cliches

I stare up at the pine tree in disbelief, unable to comprehend how it came to this. Up above I see a flash of orange in the evergreen, and I hear the plaintive cries of my cat Alastair who, stereotypically, is stuck in a tree.

            It’s Monday, and we finally have a nice day of weather. Alastair has been constantly demanding to be let outside, but the cold weather has thwarted him. Now, mainly to shut him up, I’ve taken him for a walk on his leash. I keep him on the leash because weirdly enough, I’m afraid he’ll get stuck up a tree. Of our two cats he’s the dumb and precocious one, and if a squirrel leapt off a bridge, I’m certain he wouldn’t think twice about jump after it.

            After the walk is over, I take him back to our apartment and take off his harness. Yet fool that I am I forget to close the back door, and he bolts out of the apartment. Now he’s 30 feet above the ground and mewing nonstop. I don’t speak cat, but I imagine he’s saying: “I immediately regret my decision!”

            I stare up at the, half relieved he’s not run over, but half furious that now I have to figure some way to get him down. Fortunately it’s a pine tree so there are plenty of branches for him to climb down if he wanted to. But again, stereotypically, he’s afraid to climb down.

            Watching my frightened cat, I come to the horrible realization that I might have to climb up after him. Like the sword of Damocles, the burden of my climbing blog hangs over me. I can hear the comments of “Well if you’re rock climbing, this should be problem for you.”

             There are plenty of branches for me to climb on, but the amount of branches is the problem. They’re so tightly packed together that it’s hard for anyone to climb easily who isn’t a small child or a ten-pound cat.

I grab onto one of the lower ones and hoist myself onto it. It can hold my weight, but I have to scrunch down to avoid hitting my head on the other branches. I look up at the tree, and it seems Alastair has climbed higher. Thirty feet is a long way to fall, and I don’t have a rope. Yet I suppose they’ll be plenty of hard tree branches to break my fall if I slip.

            Fortunately, I don’t have to climb up because as usual my wife solves the problem. She comes with a box of cat treats and calls Alastair’s name, and like some mythological beast soothed by the song of a maiden, he descends to the ground. I pick him up and take him inside. It’ll probably be next year before we let him out again.