h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So I get home from work on Saturday evening, and Mrs Gosho has cooked a nice dinner which we eat while chatting and watching some tv. Afterwards, she says to me 'Do you fancy some ice cream?'. '' I reply, and she says 'Ok, I'll go to Amy's (the local ice cream parlour) if you'll do the washing up'. ''

She comes back about 15 minutes later with a serving for me and one for herself, but as she walks in the door she stops and says that she thinks she can hear Dewey, and he's miaowing that 'I think I've done something stoopid and I don't know how to get out of it' miaow.

So we head off in the direction the sound is coming from - one of the apartment buildings across from ours, and when we get there we can hear him but we can't see him. Then we find out why. He's on the bloody roof. It's a two storey building and there's no way we can get up there

There's a tree right next to this building, and he must have climbed up it (which he's very good at), gone out along one of the branches and jumped onto the roof. But it's dark, and it looks like the branch he used is too flimsy for him to jump back on, so he's well and truly buggered.

Now, between this building and the one next to it is a staircase leading up to a landing and the front doors of the second storey apartments in each of them, and above it is a kind of awning which is like the roof - hipped, and with tiles. It's a good three or four feet lower than the rooves of the two adjoining buildings, but we manage to coax him down onto it. It's still too high up for us to be able to get him thoug, and the edge of this awning overhangs the landing by a couple of feet making it impossible to climb onto or for Dewey to jump down off - he'd be jumping something like 12 feet onto a flight of concrete stairs. Not a good idea.

Mrs Gosho comes up with a plan. She's got a tarpaulin in the car. If we could hold it up high enough he might jump onto it, kind of like what firefighters do for people jumping out of a burning building. He's not having any of it.

By this time the people living in the apartments whose front doors this is all going on outside of must be wondering what the hell's going on, but curiously, none of them poked their head out

Then we think of the trestle table Mrs Gosho uses at the farmers market - if we can stand it on the landing I should be able to reach up and grab him. It's a bit dicey because the overhang means that I'm going to be leaning out over the stairs, but it's the only plan we've got. So we set up the table and I get on it and lean one hand on the beam which holds up the awning. With the other I reach up over the edge of it... and success Dewey rushes over to it. After a couple of attempts I manage to grab the scruff of his neck and I try to pick him up and bring him down (all whilst leaning out an a crazy angle over a flight of very hard concrete stairs which would do me no end of hurt if I lost my balance).

Of course, he's not having any of this - 'You're gonna what dad? You want to pick me up and swing me out into thin air? Bugger that for a game of soldiers ' and he digs his claws in. I manage to pull him over the guttering, and at one point I had him by the scruff of the neck whilst he was holding - upside down - onto the wooden beam with all four claws, and Mrs Gosho was ever-so-slightly starting to panic, nay, whimper.

But eventually I manage to get him down. I've lost a little blood by now and got some fine scratches on my arm to show for the escapade, Mrs Gosho's nerves are shot to pieces, and her tub of ice cream has been knocked over First thing he does of course is run off with never a 'Thanks dad'.

We pick up all the bits and pieces and take them back to the car. A few minutes later he comes back to the apartment and we let him in. I really could've used some Dettol just about that time, for my wounds.

Panic over. He jumps up onto his favourite spot to sleep, gives us a 'What... did something cool happen and I missed it?' kind of look and dozes off.

Mrs Gosho turns to me and says 'You know, all we had to do was grab the legs of the table and hold it up - it would have been high enough for him to just step off the guttering onto it, then we could have lowered it'. It's funny the way that you don't think of stuff like that at the time

If he wasn't so bloody cute...

Yeah That was me

I don't know what all the fuss was about - I could've gotten down on my own... eventually

But you *did* get to eat the Amy's ice cream, right?

Cats are silly like that -- glad you got the little thing down, though.

Bizarrely enough, I helped write the Texas Animal Control Officer Training Manual, which includes a chapter on how to do such things as get idiotic cats off of roofs. I still have it, as it was the first thing I ever had "published".

Well, Mrs Gosho's was a lost cause, and even though I offered to share mine she'd rather lost her appetite by then.

So, what's the best way to get a cat down when you don't have a tall enough ladder and you don't want to bother the fire brigade?

Well, the training manual assumes that the officers have access to all sorts of equipment that you wouldn't have -- like a catch pole, for example.

The one thing that they do recommend is that as soon as you have the cat, you throw a heavy blanket or towel over it if possible, even before you start climbing down -- it's supposed to calm the cat down and reduce the chances of you getting your eyes scratched out. That's what I used the one time I had to climb a tree to get my cat -- I was still living in Austin then, and it would have been awfully embarassing to have to call the Animal Control folks for help -- would have never heard the end of it at work.

Of course, we did have one woman at work who actually did catch all sorts of hell from the Animal Control folk for pet neglect -- her animals were so flea-ridden they were severely anemic. Of course, that got back to the office pretty quickly -- and you just have to know that's not going to sit very well when the bosses are all public health vets....

Well, I'll give credit to Dewey for one thing:

at least he visits Gosho's fan club once
in a while.

I felt like I needed a break from the fan clubs a short while ago Paul, and now I don't know how to get myself back in It's given me some time to crack on with my Scouting duties and write (or start writing) some entries too though I've been neglecting that side of my hootoo experience for too long.

Glad Dewey is back on solid ground again, even if he an unappreciative sort.


And I guess we can all understand why you haven't been by your fan club in a while, as long as you're making good use of your time elsewhere.

But perhaps you *could* poke your head in from time to time, just to say hello.

Well, I'm not in *anybody's* fan club, and I thought it would look a bit rude if I posted in mine but not in any others. I've still been posting to most of the journals though

Well, okay.
I can understand that you don't want to be rude.
But, you see, I can't continue to post in your
fan club now either, knowing that it will continue
to be deprived of your scintillating wit and wisdom.
If that doesn't upset you, fine.

Anyway, I'm glad you're okay, and that Dewey has been
rescued from the roof of that apartment building.

And now he's managed to lose his collar so we've got to get him a new one and a new tag

THAT CAT!!!!!!

.... I wouldn't think it'd be rude of you to post only in your fan club. Why can't you!?? I doubt anyone's really paying THAT much attention, anyrot... and if they are, and if it matters that much to them, then they are really big s, and I don't mean that in the complimentary fashion!!!

Gosho is a great rescuer of cats!!!! YAY!!!!

Gosho has his hands full just rescuing
the two cats he does have. I don't relish
the thought of him getting a hernia from
rescuing anybody else's in addition.

Might be a lucrative business, though.
Maybe more fun than selling used CD's?
Would people pay big bucks to get their
cats rescued?

By Gosho, yes!!!!

There's no way I'm going through all that again, and especially not for someoone else's - I've no head for heights

Mind you, if the remuneration was worthwhile enough

KA-CHING