Now What?

I just read a blog about a cat stuck in the rafters, Ceiling Cat by Will Think For Wine (willthink4wine.blogspot.com), and it reminded me of a kitty we had years ago. My neighbors were splitting up and he took the boys, she took the girl, and they gave me their cat. This cat was very prolific, popping litters one right after the other.

Her last litter, that I know of - she moved to the corner gas station shortly after, produced two little tuxedos. One (Bartholomew) was a buff long-haired, black & white. He was handsome and he knew it. His sister we called Mouse. She was one of the most loving and affectionate cats. She was a black & white short hair and scared of everything. She slept where he allowed her to sleep, ate what he allowed her to eat and pretty much lived under his shadow. Bart liked to chase cars, what can I say? One day he caught one. Mouse began to blossom with him not around. Then she contracted Feline Leukemia. We thought it was curtains for her but a wonderful vet took an interest (my sobbing little girl probably didn't hurt) and he kept her going and she went in to remission. She was probably 10 to 12 years old when we moved from southern California to Fresno in central California. She'd always been a housecat but my husband decided that with the big backyard, she could learn to be an indoor/outdoor (mostly outdoor) cat.

Okay, now I'm getting to the point of the story. One of her favorite places was the roof. However, she couldn't figure out how to descend from this wonderful place and the food dish was down below. We tried any number of things. We ran a plank from the roof of the house to the top of the shed and another from the shed to the ground; it wobbled - no good. My husband, not being a cat person at that time, tried leaving a ladder against the roof - yeah, right. We tried to get her to go from the roof to the patio cover and then to the apricot tree. Patio cover not stable enough and what do I do with the tree? He even climbed the ladder and tried enticing her. I think she felt it was partly his fault she was up there in the first place and wanted nothing to do with him. I could climb the ladder and she'd let me take her down but this wasn't an option 2, 3 or 8 times a day. I finally went to the front yard where there was a palm tree growing alongside the house. Armed with a can of her favorite food (and the ladder - for me,) over a two or three day period I was able to teach her to climb down the tree. She came down slow and she came down backward but she came down. Needless to say, we had quite an audience. I'm sure the neighbors had a few conversations about the crazy cat lady.

Mouse was quite a girl. For a kitten who'd been given a month at the most, she did very well. She was just past twenty when she went to sleep for the last time. If you can have favorites (they're like children, you know) she was one of my all time favorites. Thanks, Barb, for the memory.