Retro Music Friday - Our Very Own Gitmo

The Mister and I had quite a day yesterday. In a stroke serendipitous luck we both ended up having yesterday off. I always love an opportunity to spend some extra time with the Hubs, and I think he shares similar feelings about me. Realize though that it may appear to those not truly familiar with us that we are all goo-goo-gaa-gaa, holding hands while staring into each other's eyes 24/7. I can assure you that this is most certainly not the case. While we do have our goo-goo-gaa-gaa hand holding moments, we need our time apart. After a while one of us will inevitably utter something about " pain in my ass ", " driving me crazy " or
" who are you and what have you done with my spouse ? ".

At any rate, I had to drive Hubs to get the 2nd half of his root canal finished up yesterday morning. He balked a bit at my initial offer to drive him to the Dr. After a few minutes he relented and off we went.

I think upon exiting his appointment he was grateful for my being a licensed driver in his presence. He poured himself into the car much like a clock in a Dali painting and requested that I " find him something to take these damn pills with. " he then threw the passenger seat back to lay down.
He was in a considerable amount of pain, until the prescription narcotics kicked in - then all was right with the world again.

After the narcotics kicked in and The Mister was feeling good I sweet talked him into plant shopping with me at a nursery the next town over. He had sucked down a scone and some coffee from Starbucks so he was feeling human again - I figured I should take advantage.
I pushed my luck with my incessant need to shop for drapes, drapery rods, etc last weekend. ( Please see the refer to the " driving me crazy " statement above.) Come to find out that while The Mister was truly pleased to have his opinion taken into account regarding drapery selection, after being sucked into the vortex of rod pocket panels, valances, swags, tie backs and finials..... I suspect he began to feel the testosterone drain from his body and perhaps began to feel somewhat emasculated.
After a time he stopped giving a shit about what went in the windows.


We bought many lovely plants yesterday and after some lunch we put said plants in the yard.
The front of our house looks awesome, btw. The back ? It's getting there.

What does all this root canal-narcotics-plant shopping-drapery shopping have to do with today's RMF ? Not much. I felt like I needed to frame yesterday in the proper context.

I should warn our BFFs Todd & Therese. There is much comedy ahead. Please move all liquids away from the laptop.

Anywho, I was in the back of our house digging up some dirt to pot some plants. I was bent over and after a few minutes I heard a WOOSH WOOSH and two somethings brush past my legs - nearly knocking me to the ground. I screamed like so many a little girl.
A large black lab belonging to a construction worker building my neighbor's pool deck had chased my poor cat and consequently my poor cat ran up a tree.

I yelled at the dog to go home.......I should back track a few minutes here....after screaming like a little girl Hubs, the construction workers and three of my Korean neighbors who happened to be in their backyard all stopped what they were doing and looked in my direction. Yep, seven men all staring at little ol' me. Then staring at little ol' me running into the woods, wielding a dirt trowel and yelling at a dog.
This is where I may gain a reputation as " the crazy lady next door. "

The dog ran back to my neighbor's yard and my poor cat was now about twenty-five feet up in a tree having an asthma attack. Three more minutes pass before Hubs comes out to where I am in the yard to inquire about my well being. I believe I said something like " Thanks for coming to my rescue hon, you know...I could have been attacked by a rabid wolf or something and be laying on the ground bleeding to death....."

We both tried to sweet talk the cat into coming down. No dice. In fact, she managed to climb fifteen feet higher up the tree. For the previous ten years or so our cat has been an indoor cat, she's only explored the great outdoors this summer - I really felt that she lacked the Getting Self Out Of Tree skill that most cats have.

As a means to vent my frustration at the careless dog owner who saw fit to let this stupid animal run amok through the neighborhood I spoke loud enough for the owner of the dumb dog to hear me.....
" You can come down now sweetie, that DUMB DOG went home..."
I'm positive he was shaking in his shoes at such a statement.

I should tell you that there were three construction workers building my neighbors pool deck yesterday. There was who I presume was the foreman. Since he looked like he was about to birth triplets for the purpose of this post I am calling him " Slim ". I could tell he was the HMFIC because all he seemed to do was stand around and swear at the other two morons, whom for all intents and purposes I'll call " Darrell and my other brother Darrell ".

We decided to leave her for a few hours to see if she'd make her way down. She wasn't budging.
Other methods of Cat Removal From Tree were going to have to be investigated.
The Mister and I stood at the base of the tree and tried the sweet talking again. Nothing.
The Mister grabbed hold of the vines attached to the tree and started yanking them in an effort to scare her into coming down. Nope.
We threw sticks at her to try to scare her down. The cat was all like " Sticks ? Shaking the tree branches ? That's the best you two can do ? Losers. "

Then we decided that we were going to try to get a ladder. Now I should tell you that as far as ladders go we've only had a need for a rather large step stool thus far. The Mister went off to the local Mom & Pop hardware store...they were closed. Then he went to Job Lot. No ladders. He had to bite the bullet and buy a 16' foot ladder at Lowes. And that wasn't cheap.

He dragged the ladder out to the tree that our cat had probably decided after so many hours in probably wasn't a bad place to live out the rest of her days. I should tell you that by the time The Mister got the 16' ladder propped against the tree is was going on 7:45 PM.
The 16' foot ladder against the tree was still about fifteen feet too short.

The Mister climbed to the top of the ladder and swore at the cat. She was unimpressed. I climbed even higher up the ladder than Hubs and attempted to coax her down. Again, she was all like " Yeah, I know you like, feed me regularly and all but.....no thanks. " Then we thought that if she were close to one of us, meaning if one of us were at the top of the ladder, and one of us shook the tree branches again maybe she'd see fit to make her way down. The only thing this really accomplished was me getting leaves, pieces of bark and other things that inhabit the tops of trees in my hair, my eyes, my mouth, down my shirt, etc. Now I was at the top of a '16 foot ladder coughing and dirty.

Then we had the brilliant idea of climbing to the top of the ladder and poking her with a very long stick. It took us three tries to find a stick long enough to poke her with. It turns out my cat, much like myself, enjoys a good poke every once in a while.

Then, as it does, genius struck. I suggested that if we sprayed her with the hose she might start to move. We unwound the hose from the rear of the house and dragged it as far as it would go - which was about thirty feet shorter than we needed. We then got the hose from the front of the house and attached it to the hose out back - which afforded us enough hose length to reach the base of the tree. As the hose at the rear of the house can only be turned on from inside the house....yeah, I don't get that either, but we don't have time for that right now....in attaching second hose to the first Hubs elected to not shut the water supply off. Which left him standing in the back yard getting soaking wet connecting two hoses. Which set off an even longer tirade of expletives as you can all surely imagine.

After success with the hose connection we both tromped off into the woods in an effort to now hose the cat out of the tree.....it's now 8:30 and starting to get dark. The cat has been in the tree since 3pm.

We both stood at the base of the tree, The Mister with nozzle in hand, and decided that we both felt a little guilty about what we were about to do, but knowing we had exhausted all other options -short of calling the fire department - which we both realized was cliche and out of the question. The Mister aimed the nozzle and fired. And fired some more. And after that fired some more. Now we had a cat that was forty feet up in a tree and wet. And the ladder was wet also. I had remarked to Hubs at during a pause in his water boarding of our cat ( which I think he secretly enjoyed..) that it was like we had our very own Gitmo.

Know what happens to things that go up in the air ? At some point they come down. Turnips, hub caps, soda bottles, even drops of water. They all come back down. I imagine that the sound of the watering coming back down through the jungle-like canopy of the woods is probably what the Amazon sounds like during the rainy season.

Get a visual of this: The Mister and I standing in the woods. Brand spanking new,wet 16' ladder leaned up against as tree. The Mister holding a garden hose and now soaking wet. Me dirty with tree stuff and now wet and the only real bonus I got was that mascara was now running down my face. And the cat was still in the tree.

All the frustration and....maybe not anger..more like annoyance on steroids we had been dealing with for last few hours had melted away. As we stood in the woods we began to laugh at the situation we found ourselves in. Although if the Asshat that owned the dog was still in my immediate vicinity I would have most likely punched him in the throat.

At 10PM I decided that as cliche and ridiculous as it was, we were going to have to involve our local fire professionals. I steadfastly refused to call 911 and had Hubs drive me to the local fire station. At 10 o'clock at night. I knocked on the fire station door. No answer. I pounded on the door. Nothing. I looked for the door bell. There wasn't one. I then stood in the fire station driveway and began to yell in the direction of the second floor windows. Finally someone opened the door - much like the doorman at the gate to the Emerald City he was cranky and wanted to know just what the hell I wanted at such a late hour. I explained the entire cat in the tree drama in ten part harmony to him. And much like my cat,he too was unimpressed. Getting to the point, I asked Mr. Nice Fireman if perhaps the fire station had a 40' ladder we could borrow. They didn't. He wasn't a great emoter and had no other suggestions for me. I should tell you that during my embarrass-myself-in-front-of-the-fire-station episode The Mister refused to exit the car and went so far as to strategically place the car on a dark section of the street so Mr. Nice Fireman wouldn't see who the poor asshole married to the loony woman with the cat in the tree was.
Things had become desperate. It was now after 10pm and had begun to pour rain. The cat was still forty feet up in a tree with no plans of descending. My last pitch of cat-tree-removal was to buy a chain saw and cut the tree down. The Mister was having no part of my delusional lumberjack inspired fantasy and in the process had decided that the cat had given him enough grief for one day and as far as he was concerned the " fucker could stay up there all fucking night. " or something like that...

Going on 11PM I was now completely undone at the thought of my poor baby in the tree getting rained on. The Mister and I had a small tiff and I stomped off to bed. Apparently he had felt some post-tiff guilt or perhaps he knew if he did not try every possible means of cat-tree-removal he was never going to get laid again.....while I was in a pre-sleep coma he was Googling " How to get a cat out of a tree ".

Wanna know some alternative methods of how to remove a cat from a tree, you know, if none of the things we tried work for you should you find yourself in a similar situation.

1) Call your local chapter of the humane society. The have professional animal handlers who who will do the cat-tree-removal thing for a small fee.

or

2) Find a laundry basket. Place a warm, fuzzy towel in the bottom along with some cat food. Affix a rope around the handles and a large rock to the other end of the rope. Toss the rock end of the rope and then fling that end on as a high a branch as you can. Now raise the basket up using the rock end of the rope that has come down. The point being that the cat will shimmy down to the basket featuring warm, fuzzy towel and food, then once in the basket you lower the basket down to the ground.

Our cat elected to come out of the tree of her own accord sometime around midnight. She was wet, hungry and I'm pretty sure she had PTSD.

She spent all day today hiding under our bed. The dumb dog next door was on a run today.

Today's RMF is I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones. Earlier in the day, before the narcs kicked in - Hubs and I heard this song on the radio and he remarked that he sure wished he'd been sedated prior to having his face drilled open. Then again later, while connecting the two sections of hose, he paused, looked over to me and said....." You know when I said earlier that I wanted to be sedated....THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TOO ! " - followed by more expletives.

I Wanna Be Sedated was initailly released in 1978 - I was two, but didn't hit big until 1980- I was four.

That is all I have for now. I hope you all have a fantastic weekend, m'kay ?
XO
Bunny