THE LITTLE MONSTER'S LATEST CAPER!

 

Mr. Piddles was stranded 30 feet up a tree!

LAST SATURDAY NIGHT, I was rinsing off some plates for the dishwasher, standing at my kitchen sink. As I stood there absent-mindedly looking out the window into the backyard, I caught a black flash running up the tall oak tree in the middle of the yard. My first thought was that it was a large black squirrel . . . but it dawned on me that it was way too big to be a squirrel — and way too black. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large, neighborhood cat (feral cat) go racing around the side of the house. And then it all computed: that big old bully cat had chased my dear Mr. Piddles up the tree. Mr. Piddles, who is actually a she (despite the name,) is a mischievous little thing — always getting into something. And there she was, perched on a limb some 30 feet in the air.

The little monster . . . always into something!

My first reaction was amazement; I'd never seen a cat run straight up the trunk of a tree so fast and so far. I headed out the door just in time to catch that old yellow cat sprinting across the street to parts unknown. I circled around to the backyard and stared up at Mr. Piddles, seemingly stranded with no nearby branches to make an easy descent. She really hadn't thought this through when she shot up the trunk to escape that mean old yellow cat. Thoughts of TV sitcoms started rolling through my head — I could just picture Opie, Aunt Bea and Barney grouped around the base of a telephone pole, peering up at Opie's pet cat stuck atop the pole with the local fire department on the way! Would I have to summon the West Union Fire Department at 8:30 pm on a Saturday night to rescue my dear cat? Or should I call Chris Lauer, the local tree trimmer, to have him drive one of his cherry pickers around to the backyard to pluck poor kitty from her perch? Then it hit me: daylight was fast fading, but I’d already “taught” Mr. Piddles how to climb down a ladder. Whenever she would wander up into the rafters of the garage (where she and her three siblings live in a little cat paradise I've set up for them), I'd helped her learn to climb back down using a collapsible 30-foot aluminum ladder that leans against the interior garage wall. Going up is easy for cats — coming down is often the challenge.

I wrestled a 30' extension ladder around to the backyard at dusk!

So, at 9 p.m. and in the last bit of fading light, I lumbered up the hill to the garage, wrestled that 30-foot ladder (collapsed to 15 feet) down, and lugged it back down the hill to the tree. I slowly extended it, one click at a time, fighting off the occasional branch and limb that got in the way. I finally got the ladder fully extended to its 30-foot reach, resting just below Mr. Piddles. She eyed it suspiciously . . . “Yes, that’s the same ladder from the garage!” I tapped on the trunk of the tree and coaxed, “C’mon, Piddles!! You can do it!” Meanwhile, I became aware of a couple of neighbors silhouetted behind their curtains, probably wondering about the crazy Cat Man of Lincoln Drive who was clattering around with a noisy ladder and talking to something up a tree at 9:30 at night. Piddles, of course, lost interest in the ladder almost immediately and began exploring other ways to bail out of her predicament. She managed to jump down to a couple of lower limbs but kept scampering back to her original perch. Finally, realizing this might take a while, I went into the house, grabbed a flashlight and my half-empty can of Pepsi, pulled up a lawn chair, and turned on all the yard lights (as if the scene wasn’t already attracting enough attention.) I could only imagine what the neighbors were whispering behind closed doors. I figured I might as well be comfortable while I waited this out. As I settled into the lawn chair, I became fully aware of the growing crick in my neck — a souvenir from spending nearly 45 minutes staring virtually straight up into the tree, first at Mr. Piddles and then navigating that stubborn ladder. At nearly 75 years of age, craning my neck back like that isn't quite as easy as it was when I was a kid! Just as I was starting to resign myself to an all-night vigil, I saw a glimmer of hope: Piddles began experimenting with a cautious "backing down" maneuver — grabbing the trunk with all fours but inching backwards instead of climbing up. Had she figured it out?? YES! YES, she had! Slowly but surely, and at a fraction of the speed it took her to zoom up, Piddles backed her way down the trunk. When she got about seven feet from the ground, she just leapt — ka-thunk — trotted over to me for a quick pat, and gave me a look that said, “Now, what’s next??” I disengaged the ladder from the tree, lugged it back up the hill to the garage, shut off the yard lights (probably to the disappointment of the neighbors, who had likely been waiting for the Crazy Cat Man to climb the ladder for a daring rescue); and at 10 pm, I finally called it a night. At least Mr. Piddles learned a new survival skill, I got some good exercise, and the neighbors got some free entertainment!