Fall is definitely here. The cats refused to come in last night, so thrilled were they with this amazing change in their environment. Of course it's their first autumn so I guess it's understandable. Or it was until 4:30 this morning when I heard them crying to come in at the front door, which some catless architect had unthinkingly placed under our bedroom.. Myers came in but no sign of Tesh, so I went back up to bed-- which was still all warm and cozy and inviting.
Minutes later, I hear a cat crying. I go downstairs, open the door, but still no Tesh, just his kittyvoice, floating on the air like the Cheshire cat. Finally I realize he has found the Roof. All our cats eventually discover the Roof. It's a wonderful cat roof, gables and
multi-levels, like a big playgym, and best of all, the front porch runs right by penni's bedroom bay windows! Wow! You can sit there and look in at her trying to sleep- and just when you hear her first contented snores, begin caterwauling.(ooo-pun!!)and watch her moan and curse you.
Apparently Tesh last night, in a surfeit of enthusiasm and energy caused by the lower temperatures, managed to catapult (ooo-another pun!) himself onto the roof. LIke all our cats before him, he had failed to work out his return to earth prior to take-off and now
wandered the Timberline terrain mournfully waiting rescue.
“Come down!” I say, being pretty stupid myself at 4:30 in the morning. Tesh comes to the edge of the overhang and begins to purr. How did he get up there? I go back through the house and out the sunroom, where the deck has a tall trellis covered in honeysuckle that rises to within a foot of a roof corner. “TESH!” I hiss loudly and wait. Nothing. And it's cold! I bet it's in the 40s and I have on- well-very little. I wander around the side of the house to the garage. “Tesh!!!!” Nothing. Just a lonely cry from the front of the house.
I go back inside and get a kitchen chair. Myers follows me back out to the front porch; this is getting interesting. With the kitchen chair I am still twelve inches too short to reach Tesh. So I climb from the chair onto the railing, precariously balancing on the two
inch width. Tesh is all excited. He thinks I'm going to get on the roof with him! We can sit up there together and watch the sun come up in three hours!! He runs back and forth.
“COME HERE!” I can just grab his paws and start to drag him off the roof. You can see it in his little kitty eyes- he thinks I've been possessed and now I'm trying to kill him. I'm going to fling him off the roof to his death below. He digs in his claws. First into the roof, then into me. I give up, nearly kill myself getting down, and go back in. By now an allergy attack has begun, due to the change in the weather, and I hate to wake up Dan who has another half hour to sleep. So I just sit for a while on the kitchen chair and sneeze.
At 5:10 Ammo comes down, doesn't even ask why I'm sitting on a kitchen chair by the front door-- maybe he thinks I sit up every night in a chair guarding the door--and leaves for swim. I think I'll go back to bed and try to get a little more sleep. Ten minutes later, Dan gets up and heads for the shower. I'm jusssst thinking I can doze off, when frantic scratching and mewing erupts at the bathroom door. Tesh is there, he is frantic. Someone is taking a shower without him!! We're not allowed to do that!!! We KNOW he has to be there to make sure we don't drown!
Did he hear the shower go on and transport himself by sheer will power off the roof and into our bedroom? I let him in the bathroom and give up, go downstairs to make coffee.
Dan comes down and says, “What a great morning! Let's take our coffee out on the porch!”
No thank you. I've seen enough of the porch already this morning.
At least my neighbor wasn't up to see this one. |
