rupee, karl's (much funnier) version

dear web journal,

in case i haven't beat this story to death and anyone might be interested in a humor-filled version of the kitten in a tree story, here's karl, my fiance's, take on the ordeal:

let me tell you a story about rupee. wednesday afternoon i let her out, only intending for it to be for a little while, as always, cause she's still a kitten and i don't want her gone for that long. she's out for about an hour and i have to go to class but can't find her, so i just go and figure she'll be around later. i come home, she's not around. titty (aka fox), the other cat, is and she doesn’t give us any clues or leads on rupee's whereabouts. the sun goes down and she doesn’t come back. we start to get real sad and depressed cause this cat is the nicest fucking cat on earth and is also totally cute and beautiful and healthy and well basically your best cat ever (unlike titty, who can be very rude and self-centered).
so we set out a bowl of food just in case (and fortunately it finally warmed up this week for the first time since thanksgiving to where it wasn't going to get below freezing at night), melissa was all sad thinking someone stole her or she got lost or ran over or whatever. i was too. get up in the morning and she's still nowhere. melissa goes to work all sad, is crying at work because this is our little kitten that we rescued from death before and now god has cruelly plucked her from our family for no reason. i'm out in the backyard looking for her some more, there's a break in traffic on the road nearby so it's finally quiet, i'm calling her name and i hear a meow! holden is with me, he goes nuts. i keep calling and hearing these meow responses, and they sound close, but they're coming from the neighbor's yard, this huge yard with two dogs that roam freely.

the dogs aren't around, so i keep calling and hearing a meow response. i can't see her anywhere so i go around the block to the front of the neighbor's house to go talk to them and see if i can go into their backyard to find her. they're not home. as i'm standing on their front porch and looking out into their backyard, i call for her again and hear her response FROM THE SKY. i look up and she's about 40 feet up in a tree, sitting on this branch, meowing at me from 40 feet in the air.
so obviously the dogs came over while she had ventured into their yard, and scared her up a tree. it was a total relief to know where she was finally and that she was OK, but i had no idea how to get her down. i leave a note for these neighbors asking them to keep their dogs in for a few hours or something so she has a chance to climb down. i go and take some pictures of her up there because it's all funny to me now and stuff.

but she doesn't come down ALL DAY. i go to class again and come back and she's still up there all meowing and scared and now moving around back and forth on this branch. we go talk to another neighbor and get closer to the tree from their back yard, and they're super helpful and nice, this middle-aged lesbian couple in fact, and one of them says we're welcome to hop up on the fence and climb the tree to get her and we're both like "nah" and she goes "well hell i'll do it!" and fucking climbs up into this tree about 20 feet and is calling for her "ruby! ruby!" (what, were we gonna correct her at this point?) and ruby is agitated but not budging. anyway, to make an already long story a little shorter, the sun eventually sets that evening and rupee stays in the tree a second night (last night). we go check on her with the flashlight before going to bed and she's somehow climbed up ANOTHER 15 feet onto a branch even higher and narrower, now pretty much at the top of the tree. still crying at us.

melissa gets up this morning and of course first thing goes out into the backyard to go see if she's waiting by the door. she isn't, and when she looks into the tree she's not even there at all anymore. she frantically wakes me up and makes me come out to try and find her again, and we're looking around in the bushes and we hear her meow again, this time from the bushes around the fence. she's on the other side of the fence though and still really scared, so she runs up to this other tree and starts climbing up it. at this point i hop the fence too and reach up and grab her right as she starts moving out of arm-range.

so now she's home. first thing she did was eat like a maniac and then take a gigantic cat-dump. she's the best. she'll probably be restricted to the indoors from now on though.