Nothing brings out neighborliness like a cat up a tree
It's after midnight on a school night and my wife is near the top of a 16-foot ladder leaning against a tree and using a neighbor's long pole to lower the roll of duct tape tied to a rope that I just threw through a fork in the branches about 25 feet above the ground. The rope is tied to two 100-foot extension cords that we use to hoist a laundry basket containing a towel and a bowl of tuna fish.
And watching it all from a perch on a limb near the top of our neighbor's ash tree is our cat, Maggie.
I don't think I've ever felt more suburban.
My family has lawn chairs on the parkway and a blanket to catch Maggie firefighter-style if she falls. The neighbor we call Cat Kathy to differentiate her from the other neighbor Kathy, who also offers her help, orchestrates the laundry basket rescue attempt.
Jack, the newest neighbor on the block, keeps Cat Kathy and my wife company after he happens upon the scene while arriving home from the pub he runs.
“You want me to get you some coffee from Starbucks, Burt?” asks Deb, whose second-story window offers the best view of Maggie as the drama extends into Monday morning. With all the neighborly concern and encouragement, I expect the fire chief to roll up with a ladder truck and bring Maggie down just in time for milk and cookies in a neighbor's yard as Norman Rockwell starts painting.
But firefighters fetching felines from trees is the stuff of suburban legend. Maybe they made kitty house calls in the 1950s, but when I mosey down to the neighborhood fire station to see if they can help, the friendly firefighter says they don't rescue cats anymore, and assures me Maggie will come down.
“After all, when was the last time you saw a cat skeleton in a tree?” he says, repeating the mantra of firefighters everywhere.
My family is to blame for this predicament. In the rush to get to school and work, we accidentally left the front door and porch door open. Our cat, who seemed perfectly content the night before while curled up on the couch watching the Bulls game, had never shown any interest in revisiting her youth as a street cat. We don't realize she is gone until we arrive home that night.
If not for a coyote, we might never have seen Maggie again.
After saying goodbye to our Easter guests, which include the neighbors who had us for Passover Seder earlier in the week, I see a coyote in a yard across the street. The coyote takes off when it sees me, and shortly after that Cat Kathy hears Maggie's plaintive meows. Fearing the worst, we look under porches and behind bushes before eventually putting ourselves in the mind of a cat being chased by a coyote. We look up into the tree and see Maggie 25 feet above us.
We hope to entice Maggie to jump into our waiting blanket, and everyone gets scared when she spurns our advice and instead follows her own strategy of climbing higher. I try to calm our kids and others by telling them that I recently read a story about a cat surviving a fall from a 10th-floor balcony. Search the Internet for “cat high-rise syndrome,” and you find amazing stories of cats surviving falls from heights that would dwarf our neighbor's ash tree.
Shortly after noon on Monday, a peregrine falcon swoops down to get a look at Maggie. Coyotes? Falcons? When did the suburbs get so wild?
As Jerry of Davis Tree Care & Landscaping in the Western suburbs attempts a harrowing rescue Monday afternoon from a bucket high above his truck, more than a half-dozen neighbors and their friends clutching rescue blankets circle below to catch the cat if she falls. Jerry, who refuses to take a dime for his work (“I have cats,” he says), manages to safely maneuver Maggie down the tree, but our cat hits the ground and runs off.
Neighbors vow to walk the neighborhood until we find Maggie. This adventure has made us realize once again what good neighbors we have. I hope it makes Maggie realize that she's lucky to live in the neighborhood, and that she's got to be back by Tuesday night if she wants to watch the Bulls game from her spot on our couch.