I was reminded of two important things last night:
#1 The power of
Kindness and Community even when it comes to helping the smallest pet member.
#2 What it’s like to
be woken in the middle of the night by a purring cat chewing on my nose, and
then listening to her play ricochet with a superball on the wood stairs – over and
over and over again.
This all started a couple of days ago when our special
little runt kitty, Lyra, went missing in the middle of the day. She had minimal outdoor experience and we
were letting her familiarize herself with our yard in preparation for summer. This was not her very first time out so we
were not overly concerned until she didn’t return when her tummy alarm rang “dinner!”
After two days of plastering the neighborhood with flyers
adorned with her whiskery face, placing ads on craigslist and facebook, and
trips to the Humane Society, we were feeling less and less hopeful that the
scrubby little cat would return. The sun
was about to set for the third time since Lyra had gone on the lam. Was she raccoon food? Coyote bait?
Curled up in some Gramma’s lap getting fed fresh tuna? With my voice hoarse from calling, “Kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty,”
I knew if she didn’t come home that it wasn’t from lack of effort on our part.
Suddenly, with darkness descending, simultaneously the phone
rang and our daughter shouted that she thought she heard something outside. Our neighbor’s voice came through the phone
as well as the “YOWL! YOWL! YOWL!” that Ella had heard.
“Does this meow sound familiar?” Pia asked, almost with a
giggle. I slammed down the phone and we
all ran two doors down to our neighbor’s driveway. The frantic yowling was coming from up a
tree. So far up a tree that we couldn’t
even see the noisemaker herself. So far
up a tree, my husband soon found out, that not only the branches but the trunk
were too thin to support adult human weight.
The sound of the hysterical creature brought plenty of
neighbors out and every wonderful one of them offered to help. Three different ladders arrived from up and
down the block. Unfortunately none were
tall enough.
I thought of all of those cartoons and picture books I read
when I was a child that showed the fire department happily rescuing a scared
kitten from a tree. I actually called
the fire department. I asked, “I was
just wondering if you guys ever rescue cats from trees, like in the cartoons?”
The dispatcher said, “Uh, I don’t think so,” but then I
think she heard the constant, desperate cat-cries in the background and knew
that this neighborhood was in distress.
She added, “Let me ask. Can I
call you back?”
I handed the phone to Makenna, a neighborhood girl, and took
my turn up the ladder. My husband had
already come down, covered in cat urine and excrement. It was clear that Lyra had been silently
perched up there the whole time since she went missing. Why had she waited until the third night to
panic? As the sky darkened, did she
finally decide she didn’t want to stay one more night up there? Why had she chosen this moment, when everyone
was home, and thankfully not in the dead of night, in the pitch black?
The phone rang and the fire dispatcher said that Engine #4
was coming our way. They must have had a
slow night and were up for a ladder drill.
Or perhaps they had read the same picture books I had.
Moments later, Bill-the-thrill-seeking-maniac who never sees
a problem he can’t fix (an engineer, of course), went to the next driveway and
climbed the somewhat sturdier tree behind the first tree. He was able to navigate through more urine
and excrement and grab Lyra by the scruff of her neck. The fire department was called and thanked,
and Bill handed Lyra to me so I could bring her down the ladder. She began purring as soon as the first child
pet her.
We all celebrated! It’s
so funny, because everyone was aware that we were missing a cat and they felt
sad for us. But that kind of thing
happens all the time and we would survive.
But last night, there was something about that sad desperation in a tiny
being, that crying voice that broke everyone’s heart and suddenly people were willing
to risk their skin to help her. As I
said to Bill as he climbed past me, “If you hurt yourself I’m gonna kill you!”
He answered, “Don’t worry, Sharece will too (his wife).”
Lyra may be a cute little cat, but people are amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment