Rescuing Sylvester

The black and white cat, our cat, looked down on us from the roof of our house. She paced from the old green shingles at the front of the house to the newer black shingles, the ones that came with the addition, at the back of the house. When we pulled into the driveway, she looked down at us and gave a weak meow.

We looked up at her for just a moment before walking into the house. My dad said something along the line of, if she got up there she can get down. At face value, this seemed to make sense, but I thought about the things I broke and couldn't fix and crossing the point of no return. What if Sylvester jumped down there from a branch she couldn't get back up to?

I looked out the sliding glass door in the back of the house, letting the thoughts build, until I needed to move. I stepped into the back yard and called up to her. In a few moments, she came to the edge, nearly twenty feet above me. She was missing the crazy energy she had as I chased her through the house and then let her chase me. Running in circles until her eyes looked crazed. Above me, I imagined she was loosing strength. How long had she been out? Would she try to jump down from there? Would she get hurt? Die?

I couldn't let my cat die while I played Frogger.

Beside the house lay the long ladder, which years ago I had used to climb up there to help with the shingling. The ladder, which I imagined, a fireman could use to carry a child from smoke clogged air, or more appropriately rescue a cat from a tree. Meow. The cat was watching me, telling me she was unhappy and knew I was coming to her rescue.

I lay the ladder flat, and extended it with the clank, clank, clank of the hook catching the rungs. Once I get it to nearly its full length, I positioned it beside the house. It was my one and only piece of equipment. I tried it, made sure it didn't wobble, tried wiggling on it, and built my confidence.

I didn't need a big jacket or leather gloves like a fireman. My tee shirt and jeans would do.

In just a few moments I was eye level with the bottom level of shingles. The cat had wondered elsewhere. For a moment, I imagined she had found her way down but then she crested the peak of the house. I could see unhappiness in everything about the way she carried herself. I held out my arms to her and she stayed just out of reach. Cats.

I climbed one more step on the ladder and at first she moved back, I was not going to chase her around the roof. I even hated the thought of leaving the ladder to get on the roof, it was the one part of roof work that made me nervous. Fortunately, I didn't have to.

She moved close enough and I grabbed her tightly, holding her to me chest with my left hand. There are a few facts, which suddenly became very relevant. My shirt was thin and Sylvester was not declawed. She, as a rule did not like to be held anyway, and holding her tight, caused her to tense. Also, as she could now see the drop below us, she was painfully doing her part to hold on.

It hurt, but I considered the pain for a moment and decided I could go down with her anyway. It took my one step to change my mind. As unhappy as I imagined her stranded on the roof, it was no where near as unhappy as she was when she thought we were falling because I took the first step. She tried to climb my body like a tree. Digging and pushing, willing to use my face, if she needed to, to get back to the safety of the roof. Her claws made it to my throat.

I climbed down, bloody and defeated. Having returned the cat to the roof, before descending alone from the height if the ladder. An hour later, the cat was at the door ready to come in. As it turned out, she could find her way down, just not before testing my loyalty.