2006-04-24:

As you know we had an incident recently with my sister's cat, Bandit. Up till very recently Bandit had been an indoor cat, and so in his defense it might have been more difficult for him to grasp concepts that came naturally to kitties that had been raised outside. Things like how to hunt a bird or why it isn't a good idea to climb 70 foot tall trees of certain death before you've learned that it is also possible to climb downwards.

On a sunny saturday afternoon Dad and I were outside enjoying the weather, when we heard meowing from off somewhere in the forest. We hadn't seen bandit for two nights, and I had been getting a little worried. I follow my ear and it leads me to this:

Exhibit A: Kitty is stuck in a Giant tree.

It was anyone's guess as to how this was all going to play out. Dad figured he'd just climb down when he got hungry, but after four nights up in the tree, 2 of them spent in the pouring rain, it seemed unlikely that anything short of a lightning bolt would dislodge him from his little perch. A google search led to the story of another unfortunate house cat who had stayed up a tree for eight days before being rescued by a "Professional Tree Climber." I didn't check the yellow pages. But at least we could confidently rule out death by starvation, for few more days anyway.

We had certainly tried our best to get him down. First by calling sweetly to him, then more forcefully, and then with a good deal of yelling and banging on the tree trunk. After this we decided more drastic measures were in order. We were going to shoot him out of the damn tree with paintballs. I'm really not sure how we got to thinking this was even a remotely good idea. Most likely we used some sort of Freudian "suppress better judgment" trick because we were frustrated and because, well… it's fun to shoot things. Sorry Bandit.

Calls to the fire department and the SPCA yielded nothing more then a few tidbits of cat saving wisdom that may have applied to normal trees, but were completely irrelevant in our situation. The conversation with SPCA lady did prompt us to construct our first cat saving machine, the Bacon Stick, which when combined with a ladder came only 50 feet short of bandit's perch, which we reasoned might fall within the waft radius of a nice tempting piece of salty bacon. The machine was about as complex as it sounds. It was two long pieces of some sort of trimming wood sandra had, which were nailed together (two nails). A piece of bacon (low sodium) was then tied in a knot around one end. Well anyway, it didn't work.

On the fourth night bandit was in the tree I decided to call in the big guns. I'm beginning to discover that there are certain perks to having an engineer in the family. Not only can you count on him to support your poor ass because you decided to get an arts degree, but he can also come up with things like this:

Exhibit C: The Plan of Salvation.
(My degree was in religious studies, does anyone else find the exhibit C joke funny?)

On the morning after the fifth night, beeb and I decided to implement the plan. Dad conveniently had a huge pile of old 2X4's for whatever reason. We also had nails, hammers, climbing ropes, a blueprint and gumption. We started hammering away in our backyard, with bandit meowing off in the distance. After a while we decided to go check on him, see if maybe he was meowing because he'd fallen out of the tree and broken his leg or something. Praise be to god when we came to the giant tree we discovered he had climbed down fully two thirds of the way down. For reasons unknown he had then stopped about 20 feet from the ground, and was balancing precariously but with great resolve on a tiny branch. We still couldn't coax him down, so we went back to the blueprints, made some revisions, and produced this:

 
Exhibit D: Mini Salvation Machine.

Trying to hoist MSM up to the giant tree made us understand how completely impossible it would have been to make a full sized machine. First of all it's amazing how much 2X4's can flex when they are nailed together in a row, and second it's amazing how hard it is to torque on something 20 feet long so it points straight up in the air. In the end we did manage to get it up there.

The plan was to have him jump on the carpet, and we would slowly lower the thing to the ground, and he would eventually bail low enough to the ground that he wouldn't hurt himself. In our excitement at finding he had climbed most of the way down the tree we forgot about the ropes, we consequently had no way of gently lowering him to the ground. Our adjusted plan was therefore to entice him onto the platform… then to push it over. Hopefully he's low enough to the ground that he won't hurt himself. Sorry bandit.

Exhibit E: Salvation is nigh.

In the end we didn't have to worry about any of that, the cat took matters into his own hands. I was ready with my camera as bandit was moving towards the platform.

Exhibit F: Swing and a miss.

So after 5 days and 4 nights, our sweet bandit was returned to us, a little dirty, a little tired, and probably down to about 3 of his cat-lives, but still all in one piece: