Feline Gratitude

My cat thanked me last night. I don’t know that’s what she did, but it sure felt like it. I can’t prove it or disproved, yet it seems more likely that she did than that she didn’t.

She started the evening in her usual coy way, sitting on the floor, keeping to herself, not deigning to join me on the bed–until she did. In a sudden burst, she leaped up and was on top of me.

She snuggle me and cuddle me in a most desperate manner; rubbing her snout against my arm, my belly, the magazine in my hand; nipping me with a ferocity that made me think of pre-coital kisses. I tried to hug her, calm her, with my other arm. Then I put the magazine down: This was a two-hand job. Such physicality was not so unusual, yet its intensity surpassed anything I had yet experienced. I could say it lasted a good five minutes, but it was likely closer to three.

Almost as quickly as it started, the frenzy ended. Maisy curled up tight–I mean, tight–against my shoulder and stilled. As intense as the frantic cuddling had been, the intimate stillness felt equally so. I was reluctant to disrupt it and thought ahead to how I would remove one of the two pillows under my head, reach over and turn out the light, fall asleep locked in this human-feline embrace. The light was farther than I thought. My stretch broke the moment. Maisy roused and leaped to the floor. I wasn’t disappointed. My back was already sore from the immobility.

A thank-you? I think it was.

 

Spring had sprung. Our kitten-now-almost-cat (teenager?) was spayed and ready to be allowed out in the warm weather. The first day went well. She raced around the house as I sat with my computer on the deck. She romped to her heart’s content and even came in without having to be hunted down. The next day she started around the house but, after more time than I care to admit, I finally noticed she was AWOL. She hadn’t made her regular check-ins. I went out front by way of vigilance. I cut back the winter grasses by way of checking a job off the list.

No signs of her until I heard her a faint meow. Or thought I did. Maisy is the least vocal cat we have ever had. If she meowed, she didn’t repeat it. I didn’t know where it had come from. Was she stuck under the porch? Up in the honeysuckle? I checked, but neither made sense. She is too agile. She can get in and out of anywhere.

Getting up and down from anywhere is a different story. It took my wife, the Thing Finder in the family, almost half an hour to finally look high enough. Maisy was clinging for all she was worth to a swaying tree trunk, one that leaned forward at a 70 ͦangle. She looked to be forty feet in the air, but it was probably closer to thirty-five. All the youthful bluster had been sucked out of poor Maisy. She was a humble kitty now. A desperate, pleading kitty. A kitty, surely, willing to repent her errant ways.

We were lucky (in one way, at least). The tree in question had a fork in the trunk within which our 28-foot extension ladder fit snuggly. Our neighbor and I held it firmly in place on the uphill side while Sue–the one to whom Maisy was deemed more likely to approach–mounted. My eyes stayed focused on ground level, but the talk from above sounded hopeful. I was disappointed to learn she never got closer than eight feet from the cat.

She descended to get the phone and call the fire department. What a cliché! But we were getting desperate.

I looked up at Maisy. She had shifted to a spindly side branch and gave the impression she could tumble at any time. My eyes traced the plumb line to a large leafless honeysuckle directly below. It might break her fall. It might break her beyond repair. (It might impale her!) I looked again up the ladder. “I’m going to be a hero,” I said, and started up with neighbor Mike steadying the ladder.

Sue must have stopped where her hands could still hold the last rung. I saw a solid horizontal branch further up and made for it, extending my reach past hers. I was able to put my right arm over the branch for stability and my left arm up the non-vertical, six-inch diameter trunk toward our terrified cat. I was terrified, too. It wasn’t the height–I assiduously avoided looking down–but I couldn’t think how I was going to hold my cat even if I reached her. With only one arm available, I was more likely to drop her than to rescue her. Not once did I consider her four sets of claws.

My fingertips stretched to within a foot-and-a half of Maisy. Close enough to get her to face down the sixty-degree incline and inch her way down–in fact, barely a few centimeters. Then she drew back. She did this three times, at least. Her fear was palpable.

Then I withdrew, too, to rest my hands upon the ladder’s last rung. By now, Sue had reached the firemen on the phone and was told cat would come down when she got hungry. For all I know firemen haven’t saved a cat since the 1950s. I determined to make one more stab at it, this time going the very end of the ladder. My feet upon the last rung and right arm over  the branch for stabilization, I stretched my left arm up, still farther than last time. Facing down, eyes wide, Maisy inched–centimetered–forward until finger and paw touched. I was still working out what I could possibly do to carry her when she leaped onto my shoulder.

Of course! She’s a cat. But she had had to initiate, and I was so relieved that she did.

The descent was quick and relatively sure. She jumped the final eight feet and my fist went into the air in elation. “I’m a hero!” I shouted, inanely (and somehow perfectly appropriately). My exclamation scared the cat and she bolted. But Sue was able to bring her to heel, so to speak. We had our dinner as darkness fell, trying not to think what a night in a tree would have meant both for her and for us.

Relief was the overwhelming emotion, but it was more than that. There was an elation of a sort, too. I felt like I had done something of supreme importance. I had not felt so intensely in longer than I could remember.

Other people would have posted on Instagram or Twitter. I called my daughter, a true cat person and, well, my daughter. She would appreciate her Dad’s strong emotions. She didn’t answer, but I left a message and that was almost good enough. As I went through my evening routine, I could hardly start a task–teeth-brushing, laying out clothes, putting on pajamas–without a metaphorical pinching of myself and an internal exclamation: “Oh my God!” Getting horizontal was as pleasurable as it has ever been.

And then Maisy leaped up and joined me. The intensity of her own emotions flooded out in a barrage of snout-rubs, toothy nips, and whole-body wriggles. Her way of saying thank-you, perhaps.

Sticklers will object that my cat’s emotional expression lacked the depth of human gratitude. I’m not so sure. It seemed deeply felt to me. She appreciated what I had done for her (perhaps) and let me know it in the best way she knew how. human gratitude is no less self-serving, thankful for acts that have benefited us. Lord knows, I was (am) deeply grateful Maisy made her leap. It spared me a night of sleepless anxiety, an expensive visit to the vet, the pain of losing her, or all of the above.

Besides, it felt pretty good to be appreciated, even if–maybe especially–if the appreciator was a cat. It felt good to appreciate myself, too: “I’m a hero!”