Trespassers will be Treed

It is clear to me now why dogs so enjoy chasing critters up trees.  I treed a cat!  In all honesty it was inadvertent.  Admittedly, I am but a novice treer.  Nonetheless, due to my actions, an animal fled up a tree and stayed there (at least for a time).  Thus, it qualifies as a treeing.

The usual morning routine around here is when Lois and I return from our walk the other dogs join us in the backyard.  I then put a cup of seed in the bird feeder which hangs from the Maple tree.  On this day however, there were trespassers in the yard. Three cats were skulking around under the Maple tree.  One of the cats was that enormous clay colored cat that is a frequent visitor.  His companions were a dark brown medium sized cat and a juvenile pale calico.  When I saw them I lunged in their direction and uttered something along the lines of, "yaah!"

They scattered.  The big cat and the brown cat slipped into the next yard, presumably under the fence where it meets a raised concrete area.  The youngster went in the other direction and finding no way out, went up a tree.

My neighbor is not an enthusiastic weed puller.  This results in weeds along the fence line.  Some of these weeds grow into trees.  It was one such tree up which the cat youth found himself.  He clung tightly to a branch and his eyes revealed what you might euphemistically call concern.

Meanwhile, the local birds who are familiar with our morning routine, had witnessed this occurrence.   Sparrows perched in a group on the Weiglela.  Pigeons waited in a row on the phone line.  Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal hung out in the Forsythia.  A Blue jay squawked from the Red Maple in the neighbor's yard.  After I put seed in the feeder, the birds descended.

The adolescent cat loosened his grip on the tree branch and looked around, weighing his options. He could climb down the same way he climbed up.   Or he could move out onto a branch and leap onto another branch then into the shrubs.  But he would need squirrel dexterity to pull that off.  His remaining option was to jump onto the neighbor's roof. 

Some birds pecked at the seed in the feeder and some on the ground while the cat remained in the tree.  A Blue jay perched in a branch at eye level to the cat and jauntily cawed, "in a bit of a bind, aren't you, Bucko?"  A half a dozen Sparrows clustered in the Pussy Willow tree and gazed smugly at the captive kitty.  "Nah, nah.  Bet you wish you had wings, eh Pal?"  Mr. Cardinal perched at a discrete distance while his mate used the feeder.  He cheeped, "hey, Young Fella, you ever hear of  karma?"

Nature can be cruel.  But it isn't every day that it's playground taunting cruel.

Before long, the big cat and the brown cat returned.  They stood on the neighbor's front lawn.  Because the Forsythia bushes blocked the view, we can only assume that they were talking junior down.  Indeed, the kid jumped from the tree onto the roof.  For some time, he moved from side to side of the roof.  Cautiously, he would lean over an edge and peer down.  One imagines his mentors on the ground advising, encouraging their protege'.  Pretty soon the lad leaped onto the awning over the porch than plunged some ten or twelve feet onto the lawn. 

He must have made it.  A peek around the Forthesia hedge revealed no cats in the grass.