The Cat That Did Not Learn

Well, we had an incident with a cat on Sunday and Monday that we hope will be a lesson to her.

It all began on Sunday morning when Mom lamented that Claws had not slept with her like she does every night, and we realized Claws had been missing since Saturday afternoon since we never put the flea stuff on her. We did not have time to look for her on Sunday morning, but after church we went to the backyard to see if she was nearby, since Claws never roams far from the house. We thought we heard meowing somewhere, so we followed the sound to the neighbor's yard and, lo and behold, the fat cat was found... up in a tree branch thirty or forty feet above the ground. We don't know why she ran up there, but we think the neighbors' possessive, protective dog Rossi may have had something to do with it. We tried coaxing her down, but she wouldn't come. By nightfall, it was cold, and she was still up there. On Monday morning, I put on my coat and went to see the poor cat, who was still on the branch and was meowing pitifully. By now, we figured we'd have to borrow a ladder to fetch Claws down. However, when we arrived home on Monday afternoon, we saw Claws on our front porch, meowing to be let in. We let her in, and she ran inside to chomp down on food for the next five minutes. She hasn't been back outside since yesterday, and we hope that she'll figure out how to climb down from trees next time she gets stuck or just to avoid them altogether, as this is the second time in two months she has gotten herself stuck in a tree. Stupid cat. Maybe she'll finally learn her lesson.

Most likely, she won't.