A Tale of Two Cats And One Dog

It's been an interesting day today; one of the neighbor's dogs named Chief jumped his fence (which, while being a rare occurrence, does happen from time to time) and wound up bounding joyfully into our backyard... which happened to be occupied by both Onyx and Patches. Thankfully Chief is a very friendly dog who wouldn't hurt a fly, but he's also very energetic and frankly overbearing -- more than suitable to terrify a pair of cats who've never met him before. And that's exactly what he did: he drove them both into climbing for their own safety.

Patches climbed the highest, seeking the sanctuary of the tree sitting in the dogs' portion of the back yard. She climbed so high, in fact, that it became impossible to get up and help her down safely with our own hands. And keep in mind: at this time, the only people in the house were myself and my brother Ryan. There was nobody else around to help us: Dad's in Georgia, Mom and Katie are in West Virginia, and Jon was at school. But we weren't about to panic and lose our minds; we were gonna get these cats to safety, somehow.

Onyx was the first to be saved; she'd climbed up on top of a support beam keeping up a portion of the back porch's roof. By lifting a chair up to her level and giving her something to walk on, we were able to successfully get her back to the safety of the house. However, by this time Patches had climbed even higher across her branch and was scared out of her mind. Undeterred, Ryan and I went to work making sure that we could get her down unharmed; as a safety precaution we took a platform from the barn out back and stuffed it with blankets and pillows in case Patches fell from the tree, and meanwhile Ryan called the fire department and I called a local tree service here in Nolensville after the fire department failed to return our call.

But remarkably, we didn't need the tree service because Patches had already begun climbing down slowly and carefully. Seeing an opportunity, Ryan climbed back up onto the platform and, at long last, lifted Patches down from the tree and handed her off to my arms. From there I took her inside, and that's where she's been the rest of the day. I finalized this little adventure by letting the tree people know that our cat had been saved, and now all the blankets we used are being washed. It's been a great day!

~M.D.