Winging It

One of our barn cats gets himself in some crazy places.  He was high up in a tree while I was raking leaves below.  My kids were concerned and wondered if we should get the ladder and get him down.

“Nah.  He’s a cat.  He’ll come down when he’s ready.”

As I spoke, I had a sudden, vivid memory of being not much older than my oldest daughter is now, hearing a cat in a tree in the front yard of my childhood home. 

“Mom?  There’s a cat up there and it’s meowing.  Do you think it’s stuck?”

“Nah.  He’s a cat.  He’ll come down when he’s ready.”

My mom was a farm kid, raised on a ranch in Montana, so I believed everything she said animal related.  Who am I kidding?  I believed everything she said, period.

The next day getting off the bus I thought I heard a meow again.  “I think there still might be a cat stuck in the tree out front.”

“Maybe.  When it gets hungry enough, it’ll come down.”

One other time I thought I could hear it.  I peered up, but the branches were too thick to catch a glimpse of anything.   

---

We all forgot about it.  Until the afternoon we were sitting in swivel chairs by the big living room window.  We were mid conversation when out of the tall tree in the front yard, something dropped like a sack of potatoes.  It hit the grass with a thud.  

​Eyes wide, mouths open, “What in the!?!?”  It didn’t budge.  After a confused pause of trying to figure out what we were looking at, “Is that…a cat?”

I jumped to my feet.  “It is!  The cat!  It was the cat!  That cat died up there!  I heard that cat meowing!”

We were half laughing, half horrified, and completely incredulous.

“Mom!  I thought you said it would come down when it got hungry.” 

“Hmm.”  She shrugged.  “I guess not.”

A few days later my brother went to bring a garbage bag out to the garbage cans.  He came in gagging, dry heaving, covering his nose with his arm.  “What is in the garbage can!?  I’ve never smelled anything like that!  What died in there!?”

We looked at each other, wide eyed.  Long pause.  “Mom!  Dad!  Did you throw that cat away in the GARBAGE CAN!?”

“Well, that way the dog won’t dig it back up.” 

“Seriously?  I’m so embarrassed,” I moaned.  “I’ll never look our garbage man in the face again.” 


 As I finished raking my pile, I told my kids they could get the ladder to retrieve the barn cat. 

“Do you think he’s stuck, Mom?  You said he’d come down on his own?”

“Eh, maybe.  Maybe not.”
​
I realized in my memory of the dead cat falling out of the tree, my parents were only a year older than I am now.  In my memory they knew everything; even about cats getting stuck in trees and how to properly dispose of dead animals. 

I laughed to myself as my memory met reality–they were winging it.  They were totally winging it…just like I am now.    ​