Possumblog

KITTY!

In order to maintain my status as the World's Most Popular Blogger, once more I participate in the thing all the really cool kids like us participate in, Cat Blogging Friday, with Lightning, the World's Most Expensive Free Kitten!

Oh, this morning he was on a tear--I managed to get one picture of him before he ran himself up the water oak. Here he is not eating the food provided for him in his snazzy dish, but rather scrounging for the bits that I washed out of his cage last night that stuck to the patio.

Silly kitten. Anyway, after this shot he scooted out to the back and went straight up the tree, and resisted all attempts to get him down. More about that later. IN THE INTERIM, I figured I'd show you the rest of the back yard, specifically the hateful volleyball net.

Ta-dah.

"Details!" you say?

Well, here is the most robust string peg you're likely to see--

--and here is the mess of confusion up at the top of the pole that caused such consternation on my part. Doesn't really look like that much now.

Anyway, I got through taking pictures and the cat was STILL up the tree, happy as a clam. Except clams don't usually climb trees, so I guess he was happy as a lark. But a lark with four legs and fur.

SO, I called to him in my special cat language which did not work, so I tried the universal language of food. I got his bucket of chow from in the house and took it over to the tree and shook it a bit with an enticing and delicious shake.

He then climbed higher and meowed.

Stupid kitten.

I tried several other things, briefly considered breaking out the 12-gauge, and then decided one more time to try the shaken food route. Filled up his little feeder dish this time and took it out to the base of the tree and gently shook it. By this time, he'd climbed down a couple of branches lower, but suddenly his attention was caught by an unwary bird that alighted over on another branch.

::sigh::

Well, it's time to go to work. My solution? Leave the stinking thing up the tree and go to work, because he's smart enough to find his cage and stick around, because he's a cat.

I walked back inside and told Catherine that I had to leave and that Lightning was still outside and if he came back to the house before she and Mommy left to please put him back in his cage.

She had a look of terror on her face--"Don't worry--I'm going to go upstairs and tell Mom so she won't be mad at you for it."

Seems that last week Catherine was playing with him one morning and he went up the pine tree and Reba and she were alone there trying to get him to come down and it took forever and Catherine was almost late for school and Mom issued an edict that the cat was not to be gotten out in the mornings before school to keep such an event from happening again.

So she was scared that Mommy was going to be mad at her. No, don't worry.

And Mommy certainly can't get mad at Daddy, because let's face it, it's just a cat, and it will come down, and in all likelihood, it will go right back to the patio since that's where he lives. He's a cat.

ANYway, up the stairs I go, looking at my watch and seeing that it is TIME TO LEAVE and I got to the bedroom and saw Rebecca was still sprawled all over our floor, completing her social studies project on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the companion volume, The Seven Wonders of the United States. Reba was getting a blouse out of the closet, and I told her, "Hey, I'm fixing to leave. I'll take Jonathan on, but Lightning is up a tree back there, but he'll come down, and even if he doesn't, I figure--"

"You can NOT leave him outside all day."

"Look, I can do whatever I want to! He's a CAT, he WILL come down when he gets hungry, and he WILL come back up to the house and hang around here because that's where the FOOD is. He'll be FINE--he's got claws and stuff, and hey, even if he DOES run away, how stinkin' far can he go!?"

Okay, see--that's what we call my Internal Monologue. It is very valuable to have, because it keeps me from waking up dead in a pool of my own blood as my lovely wife stands over me with a .45.

External monologue?

"--I figure I would go get him down before I leave."

::sigh::

Stupid expensive kitten. I'm gonna be SO late today. Well, that'll teach me to let him out in the mornings without a rope and anchor around him. Stupid moron cat owner. I got to the back door, opened it, and HEY! KITTY!! He'd climbed down and decided to come investigate all this food I'd been rattling around. I scooped him up and put him in his cage and came back inside and smugly walked back inside and called upstairs that he was safe in his cage and I was taking Boy on to school, as if it was no big deal to get him in his cage by just walking out the door.

Whew.

That was a close one.

Running late, cat up a tree, and an internal monologue bursting to get out and get me hurt.

But hey, things work out.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 8, 2006 09:40 AM