Suzanne O’Connor’s Bargains LA

Oliver’s Blunder

Funny how one little event can spin your world out of control for a couple of days.

Our 1-year old cat, Oliver is now let outside for a couple of hours a day. At first he was supervised while he was learning the layout of the yard between the house and the office. Now we check on him ever half hour or he checks in with us in the office (we leave the door open for him). The transition seemed to be going smoothly and Oliver seemed to be careful… that is until he started chasing squirrels and birds.

One afternoon this week, he was stalking a squirrel that lives in a tree on our neighbors lot. He could climb that tree from on top of a brick wall that he had just learned he could jump. Suddenly he’s a good 40 feet up our neighbors tree and can’t get down.

He’s mewing and the squirrel is chirping at him. What a ruckus!

We pull out the “ big” ladder and climb onto our neighbors garage roof that is next to the tree. But Oliver is out of range. Then we hoist the ladder on to the pitched roof, figuring we could hold it still while Oliver climbs down. We got the top of the ladder right up to his paws. No go. Oliver wouldn’t budge.

We then got out a 10 foot 2” x 4”, hoisted that up to the roof for Oliver to crawl down. Nope.  Offered him a can of tuna. Nope.  That along with coaxing him for 4 hours didn’t work.  At 8pm we quit, though we kept running out checking on him throughout the night. Nobody slept well. Oliver got rather wet in the rain last night and by 6 am this morning he was howling. 
We were at a loss at what we could do.
A search on the web gave us an idea that eventually worked. We took his cat carrier, put treats and tuna in it and hoisted it up to where he was with a rope.  Since he normally likes to sleep in it, he eventually climbed in and we were able to lower him down around noon. He had 20 hours stuck in a tree.

One wet, disheveled, scared cat made it home okay and is sleeping off his escapades. His owners are pretty disheveled too and had to take naps to recover.

So the weekly newsletter is going out late do to Oliver’s Blunder.