Recent reports that a Cat called Millie who was allegedly ‘stuck’ in a tree, after being chased up it by another Cat, have come to this Cat’s attention and of course I would like to not only report Millie’s heroism but also confer her true story to the masses of readers who catch my blog now and again in the hope that the story of this brave and justifiable annoyed Cat will give an insight into the mind of a Cat.
An insight that appears to be sadly lacking in most humans this Cat has to say, especially to those in the rescue services and the ambulance chasing media who rush to this sort of ‘event’ and in doing so; firstly create the ‘event’ to fill their tawdry newspapers and tv bulletins and secondly cause considerable embarrassment to an innocent Cat who is carefully minding his or her own business from very high up.
I have to say that I have found a Cat after my own heart! In fact more than that I think I have found a Cat who has been reading my blog and of course my wonderful masterpiece of Feline literature “Getting Out Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary” available at all good bookshops and at a place called Amazon.com which, as I say a little too often, you may have heard of because Amazon.com are nearly as famous as yours very truly.
In my wonderful book and indeed on my award winning and peerless blog I explain the annoyance that a Cat suffers when humans think it is stuck up a tree when in fact it is perfectly happy to simply take in the view. Sorry I had to laugh then I used the words human and think in the same sentence – I knew I could do it one day if I tried really hard
Still enough of the blatant and hard nosed advertising and plugging of my wonderful book, although vast summer sales are very important if I am to stay on top of the bestseller lists for a long time (unsubtle hint hint).
I think that it is true to say that Millie the Cat is obviously an avid reader of fine literature – no Dan Brown books on her shelves I bet. Millie obviously had been reading my wonderful blog and book and thought that she would give tree climbing a bit of a go and gosh did Millie have a go! Not only managing, with a little help from a cast list of various and assorted humans who I will deal with as they appear but also by rewarding her eventual ‘rescuers’ with a lot of swear word evoking deep scratches.
I use the word ‘rescuers’ in inverted commas because as usual with any “Cat Stuck Up A Tree” story there is no hard evidence that the Cat in question who is up the aforementioned tree actually requires any ‘rescuing’ or indeed any form of outside ‘assistance,’ in any shape or form.
It seems as though Millie, a rather good looking Cat who looks a lot like me with Silver, Tabby and White fur and in her case the addition of some Tortoiseshell colouring on her back, was taking in the view of the neighbourhood from 40 feet, or 12 metres if you are of the metric persuasion, above ground in a conveniently tall tree and had been keeping this vigil for a few days, around five to be precise when her ‘owner,’ and of course I use that word loosely, decided that she was in fact stuck up the tree she was in.
Humans should stop for a moment before they start to panic and jump to conclusions such as “that Cat is stuck up the tree because she or he hasn’t been down it for five days!”
Why?
Well I would have thought ‘that’ was obvious derr! Millie like most Cats who climb trees to take in the view and to feel the branches making their whiskers twitch to say nothing of feeling the wind ruffle their fur, usually climb down for food and a comfort break or two at night when it is nice and quiet and the humans in the neighbourhood are mostly asleep or rather drunk and unsteadily wandering the streets too lost to notice or care about a Cat having a err, comfort break in the front garden.
I am pretty sure that Millie was doing exactly that on the day when her human decided to panic and set in motion a procession of calamitous errors of judgements, actions and more and why did he wait for five days? Why not two or three, or seven why five days, it is bizarre!
The first thing Millie’s human did was to disturb the Fire Brigade. Why do they do that humans? Firemen have probably the most important job in the world, they save people from very dangerous things like err fire and shouldn’t be called to retrieve a Cat from a tree, especially when a Cat doesn’t want to be retrieved in the first place.
In this case it would seem that the Fire Brigade were not too happy about the emergency call and worse still they were unable to put their ladders up against Millie’s wonderfully tall tree because the ground wasn’t safe, which just goes to show that Millie had chosen her tree very wisely for her period of private contemplation and obviously didn’t want to be disturbed.
The Firemen decided to try something ‘different’ and rather uncharacteristically for Firemen turned their hose on her apparently to ‘encourage’ her to come down from the tree and presumably to shut her panicking ‘owner’ up.
So a soggy Millie did what any sensible drenched Cat would do in the circumstances and climbed higher up the tree to get out of the range of the hose, clever Cat! I wonder how many humans would think of that one.
Unfortunately for the ‘rescuers’ (and by now several hundred by-standers, gwapers and of course a number of media representatives) the hose trick had not saved Millie, unfortunately for Millie, her ‘owner’ and advisers had several more hair-brained rescue schemes in reserve and through the day carried them out not even stopping for sandwiches at lunchtime.
Next on the scene for an interview, with the media and an in-depth face to face with the BBC News cameras and then a rescue attempt were the ‘RSPCA.’
RSPCA is short for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals, of course any organisation with the word ‘royal’ in the title is going to be a bit useless and although the RSPCA spokesperson gave a very good interview to camera they couldn’t really do much because the ground around the tree was flooded courtesy of a number of disgruntled Firemen and to most watching seemed to give in a little early.
Just as all hope of a ‘rescue’ picture exclusive was beginning to fade Millie’s owner and the assembled crowd of well wishers, idlers and hangers-on had yet another cracking idea. They would order up some scaffolding. Not presumably for a public execution because this was Barnsley in Yorkshire and not downtown Tehran and as a consequence of the geography thankfully public executions had been outlawed a long while ago.
The scaffold arrived on the back of a truck with two scaffolders, who after they had managed to clear a space in the enormous crowd, very quickly used all of the poles they had brought to surround the tree and Millie. Unfortunately the scaffolding wasn’t tall enough for the brave scaffolders to hear Millie spitting at then clearly when they were at the top, in short the scaffolding tower surrounding the tree was too short.
It was probably now as the crowd started to lose interest and shout things like “shake the tree!” “Throw your shoe at the Cat!” that the scaffolders decided to take matters and of course their lives into their own hands and instead of going back for more scaffolding they decided to climb the to the uppermost parts of the trees.
These parts of trees are also known as the flimsiest. They are in fact so insubstantial that if a tree was subject to the laws of the land related to say construction they would have to have a sign clearly displayed saying “These branches will not support the weight of a human not even a child.” Or something like that! But they didn’t and it is probably pointless to ask if the scaffolders would have heeded such a sign anyway, scaffolders being who they are!
It would seem that the tree climbing went rather well and slowly but surely the scaffolders managed to get onto the same level as their quarry although it is clear to see from the picture below that their ‘quarry’ was not exactly overjoyed to have the company of two burly scaffolders in her bit of the tree, and worse she had now started to run out of tree.
To her credit Millie had managed to scratch and bite both scaffolders severely in no time at all, it has to be said here that the scaffolders really only had themselves to blame as they weren’t wearing any protective clothing.
Millie bravely put up a considerable fight against very unequal odds all the way down the tree as she struggled to stay up it and the scaffolders struggled to bring her down it.
By the time Millie was reunited with her human (in the blue shirt covered in err urine – well she was still scared in her defence) she had happily drawn a lot of blood and though boggled eyed from the struggle cooly ignored the cameras, interviewers and the crowds whoops of joy that she was back on terra firma.
Of course this story is not new it is the age old story of a Cat stuck up a tree and as it is being eventually rescued it mauls the rescuers and if you humans don’t want to hear it repeated time and again you have to do something yourselves.
Next time you see a Cat minding its own business up a tree, no matter how high it happens to be up that tree, before you call out the Fire Brigade, the Army, the Police, Scaffolders, Helicopter Rescue and any other Fred, Ned or Ted please ask yourself this simple question first.
Does that Cat need rescuing or is it simply enjoying the view?
And then before you cause a media event involving the Fire Brigade and any number of other rescue services just ask yourself this simple question!
If Cats actually do get stuck up trees and can’t get down why is it that we don’t see a lot of Cats that suffered the ultimate price for their, as human’s would put it ‘stupidity?’
The answer is rather simple and one day I expect it to occur to a human – very few, if any, Cats get stuck in trees and if they do then they are only temporarily stuck!
Of course there is always ‘one’ in the crowd, there will always be the ‘odd’ Cat, and I would emphasise the word ‘odd’ here, who gets stuck in a tree and can’t get down but they are the exception to the rule and even they are not stuck as a rule if you see what I mean.
What humans should be on the look out for is Cats who get stuck in places that have doors, where some idiot human tidily closes the door after a curious Cat has slunk in to investigate a new and probably dark place.
I have to say here that some of my best friends, yes including the half brained Ginger have been stuck on occasions but they tend to be stuck between floors in blocks of flats or in Ginger’s case in the down section of a drainpipe, no I don’t know why the clown crawled into a drainpipe backwards either! Although he says it was so he would be the right way round and therefore able to peep out of the drainpipe, which you have to admit has a strange kind of logic doesn’t it?
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