I just realised I never posted this, it happened about a week ago :-) I woke up one morning..and no kitty. I have two cats, one common short haired, and an Oriental (black with copper eyes). The Oriental is a little kitty of about 5 months, the common short haired is about 4 years old now.
The kitty is a bit....reckless, his name is Shadow. This morning Shadow was no where to be found when I clattered around in the kitchen putting food out, so I knew immediately something was wrong. I have a very practical view to my two pets, being that there is a high probability that they won't make it to the ripe old age of 15 as they are supposed to, simply because they're indoor/outdoor cats. So, I felt a twinge of fear and worry, but I went about my morning ablutions as normal. Then I was ready to head to the office, and he still had not appeared. With a heavy sigh, I started the whole stand up at the outside staircase and going " Shadowwww...Shaaaaadooowww...shadow.SHADOW! Shaaadow." And feeling like an utter and complete idiot. As people passed below I was torn between asking ," Did you see my cat? " and pretending that it wasn't me who five minutes ago had been invoking some strange Shadow demon in an odd, childish, sing-song voice. At any rate, he did not show up. So I ventured out into the wider community. He was nowhere near the pool, nor in the carpark. I ventured over to a 4 story apartment building recently constructed and set into a hill. Well there was no way he would be around there! But maybe I should look anyway, I thought. After calling for a bit, I heard a familiar "MEEoooowww" , followed by a deep and very forlorn "WRAAWWwwwRRRrr". I looked all around, but couldn't see the damned cat. More insistently I continued my shadow litany, and each time was answered by a poor-me-one meow. Eventually...i felt I had isolated the source of the sound, but found myself standing next to the wall of the building. No openings anywhere, but that echoing meow sounded like it was coming from straight ahead....I looked up. 4 stories up I saw two little slanted, copper eyes set into a fuzzy black furred head looking down at me. Somehow the cat had gotten onto the roof of the building, and was stuck in one of the PVC Gutters! There was access to the 4th floor from the hill side. I had to place a ladder against the side of the building, the base set on a balcony area on the fourth floor. I then had to coax the cat to come around the gutters to the left edge of the balcony...then had to extricate him from the guttering. My girlfriend held the ladder, but I couldn't shake the feeling that if I got into trouble she wouldn't really be able to steady it, which just added to my anxiety. It was insane. The ladder didn't reach the top of the roof. I had to rest it against some sort of flimsy awning. It was about a 12 foot drop straight down and to the right onto the balcony, but to the left the entire side of the building dropped about 40 feet to the hard, concrete ground below.I don't particularly like heights. It was shaky.I'm not talking about some nice modern ladder, all of stainless steel and properly polished with rubberised feet and stuff. This thing had seen some use, and had dried cement and paint all over it. But I eventually got him down. I believe what happened is he got onto the balcony from the road, then hopped onto the roof. Puttered around a bit on the galvanise, then got into trouble and literally slid down the tin surface to end up in the gutter. I guess if the guttering had not been there he would have dropped 40 feet to the concrete below. Took him home,gave him a bath in the kitchen sink- the gutters had been filthy- fed him and he curled up and went to sleep. It was quite an experience! I hope he has learnt his lesson and this little climbing phase is over, because rescuing cats stuck on roofs is just not the way to spend a morning! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:273825 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
