All I need now is a Roomba
Feb. 10th, 2006 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pixkrisI haven’t written a funny essay in a while, but I think this afternoon cries for one.
I have two cats: Byron and Mia. I've had Byron for 12 years and have moved him around to to all kinds of apartments and houses since he was a kitten. As a result, he's adaptable. He's also fairly savvy and--for his age--incredibly agile. Mia is...well, Mia is very sweet. She is also rather easily startled by the world. She's 5 and has the memory of a goldfish. She's rather plump and her back legs are somewhat pigeon-toed, so she's not the most graceful feline around. She's also been fairly sheltered. Up until I moved to California, she'd not been outside more than a couple of times--which is good since she has about as many natural survival instincts as she has brain cells.
I got home from school around 3:30 today and let the cats outside. I have a fenced patio where the driveway used to be in front of my place, so I feel safe letting the kitties frolic amidst the various piles of crap that I've yet to get rid of after moving. The fences on the sides are quite high--far too high for a feline to easily scale--but an enterprising cat might figure out how to leap up on a wooden chair, jump up to balance precariously on the top of the fence, and then leap up onto the neighbor's garage.
It will probably not surprise you that this was not Mia's idea.
Byron first discovered the chair-fence-roof trick last week. Getting back off the fence was not as easy, but he soon mastered roof-fence-chair as well.
Mia tried it soon after Byron. She got as far as the top of the fence, swayed madly as she attempted not to fall off, and let out such a piteous meow that I decided I’d better rescue her before she killed herself. I was feeling fairly confident that that would be the end of it. Mia is dumb, but not very brave.
I neglected to consider the whole “memory of a goldfish” thing.
As I collapsed on the couch today, I had a perfect view of the front patio through my french doors. The cats were stalking through cardboard boxes, nosing into leaves, and doing other catlike things. A few minutes later I saw Byron doing his chair-fence-roof trick. Mia looked after him longingly, but she didn’t seem to be doing much else. A few minutes more passed. Then, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Mia crouching on top of the chair, tail whipping wildly back and forth. Oh dear, I thought as she launched herself upwards, now I’m going to have to go pry her off the top of the fence ag—
Before I could finish the thought, she’d propelled herself forward and scrambled up on top of the garage.
I need to take a second to put this into context. My next door neighbor is a crazy lady with a backyard that looks like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and two mangy dogs that bark most of the night. I don’t know her and, frankly, intend to keep it that way.
When Byron was on her garage, I wasn’t too concerned. I knew he wasn’t stupid enough to go down into the rabid dogs’ yard—in fact, I was fairly certain he only went up there to taunt them. I was also sure that he could get back into our yard. Mia, on the other hand… But what could I do? I couldn’t get over the fence, and there was no way I was going to knock on her door. I figured Mia would find her way back with Byron eventually.
As I'd expected, Byron looked around for the dogs for a couple of minutes, got annoyed that they were inside and therefore not tauntable, and then sauntered back over to the edge: roof-fence-chair and home. But when I looked up to find Mia, she'd disappeared. Huh. Odd. Then:
MEEEEOOOOOW!
MEOOOOW! MEEEEEOOOOOOW! MEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOW!
Mournful, tragic wailing from the other side of the fence. She didn’t, I thought. She couldn’t have been dumb enough to jump down INSIDE the rabid dog yard, could she?
I went outside, stepped onto the chair, and pulled myself up enough to peek over the top of the fence. There she was, a pathetic crouching bundle of tabby stripes, curled on the ground in the six inches between the garage and the fence. Shit.
I started calling her, and she did at least look up at me, but she didn’t move, and she didn’t even stop the banshee meows long enough to breathe. Meanwhile, my landlord (a lovely Brit named Peter) wandered out into his back yard and saw me doing my Peeping Tom impression.
“Um…hello?”
“Oh! Um. Hi Peter. My cat’s gone over the fence. I’m just trying to get her in.”
“Oh no!” He rushed through his gate and into my patio. “Can I help?”
I looked around. “Nah, I think I may just have to break down and knock on the neighbor’s door. The dogs are inside, but the poor thing’s terrified as it is.”
As I said “neighbor”, Peter looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Ah…I think perhaps we’d better not. Is there another way?”
What followed was a series of “other ways” that would have made MacGyver proud. I tried going up to the neighbor’s driveway and calling Mia while Peter perched on the chair and gave me status reports: “She’s moving! Oh wait. She’s stopped. Moving again! Coming your way! Here she—oh no, now’s she’s coming back.” A few minutes of this was enough: it was abundantly clear that there was no way Mia was going to get brave enough to venture out in front of that garage. Next, Peter decided he was going to go over the fence. After attempting to scale the chair, a rickety step stool, and the base of an old table, I finally convinced him that that was not going to work. Then he tried snaking a broom handle down to the ground in case she wanted to “shimmy up it”. Shimmy up a broomstick?? Was he kidding? The cat can’t even balance on a fence! Needless to say, no success. I should add that at some point during this fiasco, Byron meandered out of the house and sprawled in front of the door. His look said clearly, What are the stupid bipeds up to now?
Finally, Peter hit on a good idea. “I’ve got it! Do you have a hammer? If we can just get this base loose, she can come through this way!”
Brilliant! I ran inside to fish my hammer out of my toolbox, and soon Peter was prying at the bottom of one of the boards. The last nail popped loose, and we pried the board back to leave a very respectful cat-sized gap. “Perfect!” I said. “Mia! Mia, Mia!”
Peter, who was now halfway down the fence from me, shouted, “She’s still just sitting here!”
I tried food, her favorite toy, and my very sweetest kitty-voice, but no luck. Finally I said, “I think maybe you’ll have to scare her this way. Just knock on the boards down there or something.”
He tried knocking, which got her to move about a foot my way. He tried again. Nothing. He decided to try dropping things right behind her. I’m not sure what was going over the edge, but given the way the neighbor’s yard looked, I wasn’t too worried about making a mess.
As the object hit the ground, I saw a grey and black blur tear past the open gap in the fence and out of my line of sight. Immediately, the piteous MEOW MEOW MEEEEOOOOOWWW! resumed.
“FUCK!”
I climbed back up on the chair to look over the fence again. This time, Mia was all the way at the back of the garage and huddled in a pile of leaves. A second later the two dogs bounded out of their dog door and into the yard. Soon the MEOOEEEEOOOOWWWOWOWOW!!!! was accompanied by WOOF!WOOF!WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOOOOF!
WOOF WOOF SCRAMBLE!
Great. My cat—who had meowed helplessly at the base of a fence for thirty minutes because she needed me to rescue her—was now in a tree. I don’t think Mia had ever climbed a tree before. She certainly looked surprised at being there. She was perched about eight feet up where two branches met and was meowing in a whole new range: MEOWMEOWMEOWMEEEOOOW!!
We tried calling her. We tried coaxing her. Peter tried the broom handle thing again, which resulted in her climbing even higher. (It should be noted that at this point I took the broom away from him).
I knew asking Peter to try to get on the fence was going to result in death or dismemberment or both, and his fiancée Cindy would kill me. It was time to make Mary Lou Retton proud.
Peter balanced the chair as I climbed up on the back of it, grabbed the top of the fence, hauled myself up, swung my leg over, leapt onto the neighbor’s roof, and stepped into the tree. I think I was as surprised as Mia when I actually made it.
Face-to-face with Mia for a second, it occurred to me that I had no idea how I was going to get down. Now we were both stuck in a tree in a stranger’s yard with rabid dogs barking at us on the ground. Fucking great.
Mia took this opportunity to remember that she was a cat. With a surprised meep!, she scrambled out on a limb and leapt five feet onto my roof. I watched as she dashed across the tiles and Peter cheered. “We’ve got her!” he cried gleefully. “Come on down and we’ll figure a way to get her off there.”
Tree to roof to back of fence to front of fence to oh my god I’m going to fall off of Peter’s shoulders to fuck this chair is falling apart to PUT ME DOWN I WANT TO KISS THE CONCRETE!
I stepped onto the ground just in time to see Mia do a flying squirrel impression of the roof and into Peter’s yard—easily a twelve foot drop right on top of Peter’s two dogs.
We rushed over to his yard, hearing MEOWMEOWYIPEYIPEYIPE, and opened his gate just in time for Mia to come tearing out of his yard, across the patio and into my house, Peter’s dog Spanky (yes, I know, but forgive him—he’s a Brit) hot on her heels. Spanky came tearing back out of my house mere seconds later as a hugely puffed Byron came spitting and hissing after him.
At that point Peter took his dogs and practically ran into his yard, I slammed the door closed, and both cats disappeared under the bed.
I’m not sure if there’s a moral to this story. All I can tell you is that if there is one, I’m not climbing any trees to get it.
I have two cats: Byron and Mia. I've had Byron for 12 years and have moved him around to to all kinds of apartments and houses since he was a kitten. As a result, he's adaptable. He's also fairly savvy and--for his age--incredibly agile. Mia is...well, Mia is very sweet. She is also rather easily startled by the world. She's 5 and has the memory of a goldfish. She's rather plump and her back legs are somewhat pigeon-toed, so she's not the most graceful feline around. She's also been fairly sheltered. Up until I moved to California, she'd not been outside more than a couple of times--which is good since she has about as many natural survival instincts as she has brain cells.
I got home from school around 3:30 today and let the cats outside. I have a fenced patio where the driveway used to be in front of my place, so I feel safe letting the kitties frolic amidst the various piles of crap that I've yet to get rid of after moving. The fences on the sides are quite high--far too high for a feline to easily scale--but an enterprising cat might figure out how to leap up on a wooden chair, jump up to balance precariously on the top of the fence, and then leap up onto the neighbor's garage.
It will probably not surprise you that this was not Mia's idea.
Byron first discovered the chair-fence-roof trick last week. Getting back off the fence was not as easy, but he soon mastered roof-fence-chair as well.
Mia tried it soon after Byron. She got as far as the top of the fence, swayed madly as she attempted not to fall off, and let out such a piteous meow that I decided I’d better rescue her before she killed herself. I was feeling fairly confident that that would be the end of it. Mia is dumb, but not very brave.
I neglected to consider the whole “memory of a goldfish” thing.
As I collapsed on the couch today, I had a perfect view of the front patio through my french doors. The cats were stalking through cardboard boxes, nosing into leaves, and doing other catlike things. A few minutes later I saw Byron doing his chair-fence-roof trick. Mia looked after him longingly, but she didn’t seem to be doing much else. A few minutes more passed. Then, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Mia crouching on top of the chair, tail whipping wildly back and forth. Oh dear, I thought as she launched herself upwards, now I’m going to have to go pry her off the top of the fence ag—
Before I could finish the thought, she’d propelled herself forward and scrambled up on top of the garage.
I need to take a second to put this into context. My next door neighbor is a crazy lady with a backyard that looks like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and two mangy dogs that bark most of the night. I don’t know her and, frankly, intend to keep it that way.
When Byron was on her garage, I wasn’t too concerned. I knew he wasn’t stupid enough to go down into the rabid dogs’ yard—in fact, I was fairly certain he only went up there to taunt them. I was also sure that he could get back into our yard. Mia, on the other hand… But what could I do? I couldn’t get over the fence, and there was no way I was going to knock on her door. I figured Mia would find her way back with Byron eventually.
As I'd expected, Byron looked around for the dogs for a couple of minutes, got annoyed that they were inside and therefore not tauntable, and then sauntered back over to the edge: roof-fence-chair and home. But when I looked up to find Mia, she'd disappeared. Huh. Odd. Then:
MEEEEOOOOOW!
MEOOOOW! MEEEEEOOOOOOW! MEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOW!
Mournful, tragic wailing from the other side of the fence. She didn’t, I thought. She couldn’t have been dumb enough to jump down INSIDE the rabid dog yard, could she?
I went outside, stepped onto the chair, and pulled myself up enough to peek over the top of the fence. There she was, a pathetic crouching bundle of tabby stripes, curled on the ground in the six inches between the garage and the fence. Shit.
I started calling her, and she did at least look up at me, but she didn’t move, and she didn’t even stop the banshee meows long enough to breathe. Meanwhile, my landlord (a lovely Brit named Peter) wandered out into his back yard and saw me doing my Peeping Tom impression.
“Um…hello?”
“Oh! Um. Hi Peter. My cat’s gone over the fence. I’m just trying to get her in.”
“Oh no!” He rushed through his gate and into my patio. “Can I help?”
I looked around. “Nah, I think I may just have to break down and knock on the neighbor’s door. The dogs are inside, but the poor thing’s terrified as it is.”
As I said “neighbor”, Peter looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Ah…I think perhaps we’d better not. Is there another way?”
What followed was a series of “other ways” that would have made MacGyver proud. I tried going up to the neighbor’s driveway and calling Mia while Peter perched on the chair and gave me status reports: “She’s moving! Oh wait. She’s stopped. Moving again! Coming your way! Here she—oh no, now’s she’s coming back.” A few minutes of this was enough: it was abundantly clear that there was no way Mia was going to get brave enough to venture out in front of that garage. Next, Peter decided he was going to go over the fence. After attempting to scale the chair, a rickety step stool, and the base of an old table, I finally convinced him that that was not going to work. Then he tried snaking a broom handle down to the ground in case she wanted to “shimmy up it”. Shimmy up a broomstick?? Was he kidding? The cat can’t even balance on a fence! Needless to say, no success. I should add that at some point during this fiasco, Byron meandered out of the house and sprawled in front of the door. His look said clearly, What are the stupid bipeds up to now?
Finally, Peter hit on a good idea. “I’ve got it! Do you have a hammer? If we can just get this base loose, she can come through this way!”
Brilliant! I ran inside to fish my hammer out of my toolbox, and soon Peter was prying at the bottom of one of the boards. The last nail popped loose, and we pried the board back to leave a very respectful cat-sized gap. “Perfect!” I said. “Mia! Mia, Mia!”
Peter, who was now halfway down the fence from me, shouted, “She’s still just sitting here!”
I tried food, her favorite toy, and my very sweetest kitty-voice, but no luck. Finally I said, “I think maybe you’ll have to scare her this way. Just knock on the boards down there or something.”
He tried knocking, which got her to move about a foot my way. He tried again. Nothing. He decided to try dropping things right behind her. I’m not sure what was going over the edge, but given the way the neighbor’s yard looked, I wasn’t too worried about making a mess.
As the object hit the ground, I saw a grey and black blur tear past the open gap in the fence and out of my line of sight. Immediately, the piteous MEOW MEOW MEEEEOOOOOWWW! resumed.
“FUCK!”
I climbed back up on the chair to look over the fence again. This time, Mia was all the way at the back of the garage and huddled in a pile of leaves. A second later the two dogs bounded out of their dog door and into the yard. Soon the MEOOEEEEOOOOWWWOWOWOW!!!! was accompanied by WOOF!WOOF!WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOOOOF!
WOOF WOOF SCRAMBLE!
Great. My cat—who had meowed helplessly at the base of a fence for thirty minutes because she needed me to rescue her—was now in a tree. I don’t think Mia had ever climbed a tree before. She certainly looked surprised at being there. She was perched about eight feet up where two branches met and was meowing in a whole new range: MEOWMEOWMEOWMEEEOOOW!!
We tried calling her. We tried coaxing her. Peter tried the broom handle thing again, which resulted in her climbing even higher. (It should be noted that at this point I took the broom away from him).
I knew asking Peter to try to get on the fence was going to result in death or dismemberment or both, and his fiancée Cindy would kill me. It was time to make Mary Lou Retton proud.
Peter balanced the chair as I climbed up on the back of it, grabbed the top of the fence, hauled myself up, swung my leg over, leapt onto the neighbor’s roof, and stepped into the tree. I think I was as surprised as Mia when I actually made it.
Face-to-face with Mia for a second, it occurred to me that I had no idea how I was going to get down. Now we were both stuck in a tree in a stranger’s yard with rabid dogs barking at us on the ground. Fucking great.
Mia took this opportunity to remember that she was a cat. With a surprised meep!, she scrambled out on a limb and leapt five feet onto my roof. I watched as she dashed across the tiles and Peter cheered. “We’ve got her!” he cried gleefully. “Come on down and we’ll figure a way to get her off there.”
Tree to roof to back of fence to front of fence to oh my god I’m going to fall off of Peter’s shoulders to fuck this chair is falling apart to PUT ME DOWN I WANT TO KISS THE CONCRETE!
I stepped onto the ground just in time to see Mia do a flying squirrel impression of the roof and into Peter’s yard—easily a twelve foot drop right on top of Peter’s two dogs.
We rushed over to his yard, hearing MEOWMEOWYIPEYIPEYIPE, and opened his gate just in time for Mia to come tearing out of his yard, across the patio and into my house, Peter’s dog Spanky (yes, I know, but forgive him—he’s a Brit) hot on her heels. Spanky came tearing back out of my house mere seconds later as a hugely puffed Byron came spitting and hissing after him.
At that point Peter took his dogs and practically ran into his yard, I slammed the door closed, and both cats disappeared under the bed.
I’m not sure if there’s a moral to this story. All I can tell you is that if there is one, I’m not climbing any trees to get it.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 02:43 am (UTC)Um... Glad everyone is okay.
Bwah haaaaa haaaa haaaaaa.
No, really. I am glad. Just now that I know everyone is okay? Funny as hell.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 04:40 pm (UTC)And also? Poor Spanky, brave Byron. (And brave Kristin, too!)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-11 11:19 pm (UTC)OTOH? Memory of a goldfish. Might want to move that chair.
hee
no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 01:04 am (UTC)She was perched about eight feet up where two branches met and was meowing in a whole new range: MEOWMEOWMEOWMEEEOOOW!!
OMG that's exactly what they do - great description.