One evening when we returned from town, as we were unloading groceries from the car, we heard the faint call of Lucifer our cat. It took us a while to locate where the sound was coming from, but when we finally discovered Lucy, we were shocked. She was perched very high on a branch of a willow tree, I mean, really high. I assumed that while we were away, a bear or something must have wandered into the yard and Lucifer had scrambled high up in the willow for safety.
We called and called to her hoping to coax her down, but pleading as we did, Lucifer, while tempted and wanting to come down, was afraid to commit to the steep climb down the tree.
We were dismayed, no matter how much we begged her, she was just too afraid. As night fell, we gave up, and figured we couldn’t do anything until the light of the next day. We woke up the next day to a heavy rain shower. When I went outside to check, a wet and cold Lucy was still up on the high branch, weakly meowing in a very subdued and quiet way. I knew I had to do something to get her down, but didn’t know exactly how to accomplish it.
I had an extension ladder, that would expand to 20 feet (6 m.). I carried it over to the tree and extended it, but it was obvious that climbing up the ladder wouldn’t get me close enough to where Lucifer was trapped. Then I thought that if I backed the truck over to the tree and stood the ladder in the bed of the truck, it would gain me about 3 extra feet in elevation, so that is what I did.
With the ladder in the truck and extended, I climbed up, but I still wasn’t close enough to be able to grab Lucy. What to do, what to do?
I then got another idea. I went out to the shop and got an eight foot long 2 x 4 wooded stud and nailed a plywood platform on the end of it. I figured if I climbed up the ladder as far as I could, then lifted the stud with the platform up to Lucifer’s level, maybe she would get onto the platform and I could slowly lower her down to my chest level, and grab her.
I knew it was a haywire idea that had the potential for a lot of things to go wrong, but Lucy was wet cold, hungry, and probably hypothermic after spending the rainy night in the tree, and I couldn’t think of any other way to get her down, so I tried it. The cartoonish, bare-boned drawing above gives you an idea of what I was going to do.
Amazingly, when I managed to get the platform up to Lucy’s level, with a little coaxing she did go onto the platform. I knew she was very desperate to get out of the tree. I steadily lowered the stud with Lucy on the platform, down low enough for me to grab the wet cat. I dropped the platform to the ground, holding Lucifer close to my chest. I then carefully and slowly descended down the ladder with a grateful Lucy desperately clinging to my shirt.
Once Lucifer and I were on the ground, I was still flabbergasted that the whole crazy procedure had succeeded. When I put Lucy down, she was so happy to once again be inside the house with a big bowl of food to eat.
The event is certainly seared into my memory, and it is still hard for me to believe that it worked.
ou can see my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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