I keep saying there is never a dull moment here, so read on if you enjoy life......

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Earlier tonight I got a phone call from my next door neighbour saying my 20lb cat, Spanky, was stuck up a tree in her back yard.
Of course I dropped what I was doing (cooking dinner) and went flying out the door with torch in hand and trying to put on a cardigan, it's cold after sunset.
My neighbour, Brenna, came out to meet me and let me know...
it has to be the WORST tree in her back yard....
remembering we live on the river bank.
You guessed it!
When I shined the torchlight up the tree here was my big black cat stuck in the fork of the tree trunk, but not one of the trunks that went up over the land, nooooo, that would be too easy.
HE was stuck on the trunk that grew on about a 65* angle, out over the water.
And where was Ray when I need him, he'd gone to the shops to pick up some essentials, hadn't he?
So, back I come home to see what I could grab, some pole or something long enough to try prodding him to make him try and come down.
Now, of course you have realised it is dark outside and quite cool and I'm in full, "What on earth can I do" mode and feeling totally useless because I can't even reach the extension ladder since Ray stored it in a rack just below the 9 foot high garage ceiling, I'm only 5'3". Aaaaargh!
My poor baby, he must be terrified stuck up there with strangers watching him.
Did I tell you he was a rescue cat and he is absolutely terrified of strangers, he hides under our bed when the doorbell rings.
Anyway, I find a long metal pole and head off back into the neighbours, but not before phoning Ray and telling him to hurry and get home.
So, here I am, outside in the dark, my right leg half wrapped around one of the trunks and stretching the pole up as far as I could to try and reach my poor cat.
NOPE! This ain't ever goin to work, the pole is about 4 feet short of him and he's just sitting there looking down at me.
I gave that up as useless and tried cajoling the cat down.
Then I got a brainwave, why don't we push Brenna's houseboat down towards and under the tree, he might jump down onto it.
Yeah right! Not on your sweet Nelly is that bloody cat jumping onto that boat!!!!
Thank Heavens! Ray is home, he can get the extension ladder down and bring it over.
That said, in no time at all, he had the ladder extended out onto the tree trunk, leaning away from us out over the water.
Of course, he left it short of the cat by about 4 foot.
"So what do you think I am, a monkey?
I can shimmy the rest of the way?"
Extend the ladder some more, I test it by giving it a shake, not happy with where it is resting on the trunk, make it more centred. Nerves now very strained as I face this daunting task because there is no way that mongrel cat will go to anyone else but me. (notice the change from endearments to expletives, they might even have been a bit worse than those printed here. LOL!!!!)
So, I take my first tentative step up the, not very stable ladder, balanced by the top rung leaning against the tree trunk, jutting out over the icy cold, pitch black, foreboding water.
And with the encouraging words of... "I wish I had a movie camera"; "If you fall in I'll laugh"; "we could get a $10,000 video", "yeah, funniest home videos";
ringing in my ears, I slowly ascend the ladder.... up, up, up, towards that bloody cat. I was so shaky, the ladder was so unstable, underneath me was the water, I kept telling myself don't look down, but how could I help it I was basically straddled over a tree trunk, leaning out over the water and it was a looooong way down. Did I tell you I have very bad knees? They are both bone on bone, one of them often gives way underneath me when I'm on dry land.......
So here I am stuck, 3/4's of the way, up the ladder and my left leg refused to move up another rung. I had hold of another straighter trunk with my right hand, one more step upwards and I would lose that reassuring hand hold.
The jokes from below changed to supportive encouragement as they all realised I was terrified of falling and that I couldn't get myself to move.
When Ray said those magic words, "you don't want your little boy stuck out in the cold all night, do you? You can do it!
So up I went, climbing ever higher on this shaky ladder.
I have no idea what I thought I was going to do when I reached him, remember he weighs in at twenty pounds, so I can barely lift him at the best of times.
Now here I was, hanging onto a ladder, twenty five feet off the ground, even further from the surface of the water, one arm wrapped around the tree trunk trying to cajole my poor terrified baby to come to me. This was impossible! I can't get a hold of him cleanly, because I have one arm around each side of the trunk and I can't possibly get them both around the same side.
I looked down to the roof of the houseboat, probably 10 - 12 feet below us and made the most difficult decision.
After about five minutes battling with my terrified cat, looking at the absolute fear and confusion in his eyes, I managed to force him off the tree and onto the roof of the houseboat, where he stayed for another hour before Daddy managed to cajole him to come to him and he grabbed him and got him down the rest of the way.
Do you know how much it hurts when you have to be cruel to be kind?
This mum's heart can only dish out so much
tough love and she always ends up in tears.
Spanky is now safely sound asleep on his favourite chair beside his mum and I don't think he will ever go into next door again.
Hope you enjoyed my little tail! LOL!
Hugs n roses, Meganne
Sorry, I don't have any photo's of the actual event but if you look at the tree, in front of the houseboat, the trunk leaning out over the water, you can see the fork in it where Spanky was stuck.
It doesn't look quite so tall in this photo because the river was in flood then so you can't see the land, or their jetty, it was under water.