The cat story

After church on Sunday, we were relaxing on the back deck... watching the kids play... shouting safety warnings and commenting on what beautiful (albeit windy) weather we were having.

When suddenly, Paul looks over to the left and says ...

"How did that stuffed animal get way up in that tree?"

Then I say...

WAIT! It MOVED! That's a CAT!

(nothing gets by us.)

 

After several minutes of calling "heeere kitty, kitty, kitty!"

letting the kids see the cat way up in the tree,

and considering leaving it there and waiting for it to come down on it's own..

but then deciding it would be snatched up by a hawk or other predator...

Yeah. We decided to try to get the cat down.

Paul, who does not like cats, went and got his 20 foot extension ladder.

Which was just slightly too short.

Paul and the neighbor, Wayne, put some thought into whether the cat would jump onto Paul's head and attack him... or peacefully and thankfully climb into his arms and descend to safety.

Paul decided the ladder was a bad idea...

and we were almost going to go ask the other neighbor, Firefighter Adam, to go get his ladder truck...

but then Paul had an EVEN BETTER idea.

This is the point at which I decided that if the cat was ABLE to get himself out of that tree on his own, he certainly would have done so by now.

The cat begins to worry...

"What the Meow??"

Dear Webster... Put this in next to definition of "scaredy cat".

Always the mature, stable-minded of the crew...

Paul and Chrissy hysterical and unable to breathe...

while the kids warn Dad that he's about to chop the cat's leg off.

I was laughing so hard...

 I could NOT catch my breath and I was trying - through tears - to see the cat so we could catch him in our blanket/trampoline/safety net.



"What?? It works in cartoons!"



Then... the branch started to crackle..

the cat started to panic...

No... it's not a cat-kebab.

Then suddenly... Cat climbed down the falling branches and

JUMPED over my head, landed on his feet, and RAN.

But... he didn't take into account that we have 7 kids plus 2 neighbor kids visiting.

They caught him.

And I checked him out... he is fine.

We fed him anchovies, gave him some water,

discussed names...settled on "Steve".

And later that day... cat moved on.

We don't know if he will be back...

but we don't think he will be climbing any trees anytime soon.

***No cat was harmed in the making of this photo-story.