Out on a Limb

Our Siamese mix - Meshak - went missing last night. This morning - still no Meshak. He is very predictable because like most of us he loves to eat and be warm. At noon when I went outside to take Charlotte - the four month old Puggle - for a walk, I felt a lot of concern for Meshak and I began to call out his name and the obligatory "kitty, kitty, kitty." There it was, his distant and mournful "meowwwww." I followed the sound continuing my calls. I spotted him about 20 feet up one of the 100 plus feet white pines that line our yard, out on a limb.

There are about eight of these trees. My Papa planted them over 50 years ago and without competition from other species they look like some sort of beanstalks to heaven. The massive height and exuberant limbs worry my Mamma to death because a tornado could come and blow one of those trees onto the house leading to immediate death for those inside and unwanted media attention for her. The other background note is that Meshak was born and reared in high desert. He never even saw a tree prior to our move to North Carolina.

All those thick, sturdy limbs at the bottom gave me the same confidence that Meshak probably felt yesterday when he made his way up. From the ground it looks fairly easy to get up and back down. Once you get past about eight feet, the limbs are tightly packed and some are rotten and break off when you grab hold. In addition, the sap is everywhere. So, here I am about ten feet off the ground, my hands lathered in sap, and there's Meshak another ten feet up bawling his head off and wrongly thinking that I am going to rescue him. I wanted to rescue him, but it was not possible for me to take the same path up nor was it possible for me to make him take the steps needed to just get down. His path down is there, but he's convinced himself that if won't work. Maybe he'll fall or the limb will break or maybe if he waits there long enough crying I'll go ahead and climb up there to get him. The end result is that Meshak is wasting valuable time he could use mousing, eating cat food, or sleeping by the heat vent under the kitchen table. Time is not waiting for him. Life is going on around him but he's up there focused on fear and blaming me for not helping him off that limb.

I think what Meshak needs to do is scary and maybe even counterintuitive, but all the same he probably won't get down until he first realizes how much better it is going to be for him on terra firma and then focuses on the individual steps needed to get there. Getting off that limb has become a painful and scary thing in his mind. I can see him from my office window just laying on that limb. Now that I am not out there agitating him with the lure of food or my calls, he has convinced himself that the limb is actually comfortable and maybe even safer than the earth. I can't wait to see what Meshak decides to do. Will he just get down or will he wait for the Volunteer Fire Department?