Kitten in the Tree

We heard the faint meowing off in the woods, did a quick check in the house to see which cat was there, and then set off to follow the noise. Seeming this was my only day off and seeming like I have been through plenty of animal injury issues with Lisa, I was immediately hoping this was not going to entail the 50 minute drive to the Middletown Emergency animal hospital.

Well, there was no injury, but there was a cat stuck up the tree about 40' high - very far up there with no way down - lots of pathetic crying, I mean, whose fault is it, really? Anyway, I ran to get my camera and heard Lisa screaming in the background 'not everything is a blog post!" That really cracked me up -although in the end I disagree with her.

Here's good old Ruby of prior post fame stuck way on up in a tree.

That's a crazy picture above with super leaf green eyes. The camera zoom makes it appear like the cat is not so high, but that's very deceptive. So what does a builder do in this situation? You probably say 'get a ladder', and that would be totally correct except I don't own a ladder.

Poor Ruby, balancing on a small branch. Best yet, it started to rain. So I don't have a ladder, my main man Juan is in Connecticut, and so Lisa calls up a friend Darryl who owns a small gentleman's farm in Cochecton, and he very kindly came over with his 24' ladder. Problem is, Ruby was 40' in the air.

So Darryl, against my better judgment and wishes, climbed to the top of the ladder and then scaled up another 10' up the tree on branches only 2" thick. So he makes it up there, grabs the cat, I scurry up the ladder, he hands the pine-tree sticky cat off to me, I do the -behind-the-neck cat paralysis move and descend quickly with Darryl right behind me.

Here's our hero in the tree, waving to the breathless crowd (me and Lisa).

This is a true country pic, - with pregnant lisa fighting back tears, our Hero of the story Darryl and the ladder that is twice as big as his truck.

The embarrassing part of the tale is everytime Dr. Darryl asked for something I didn't have it - rope, bag, screw-driver, chainsaw.

Since half my life is about insurance, I immediately ran a few scenarios through my head - whose responsibility and liability would it have been if Darryl wasn't as skilled in tree climbing as he lead us to believe? I don't own the house so it's not my homeowners policy, it wasn't at work so it's the not MY CRAZY EXPENSIVE LIABILITY INSURANCE POLICY, so it must have been the leasor's ultimate responsibility. Who knows? No harm, no foul.

Played golf with my insurance broker over the weekend and he's a big blog follower and since he makes it a habit of separating me from my money, he says he regularly checks the blog with hesitant tepidation, wondering if he's been profiled. He hasn't been, but he should - especially after selling me a construction liability policy that forced me to make a decision between toning down the blog (no more calling bad companies out by name) or excluding the part of the policy that protects me against inadvertent libel with my advertising.

I chose to exclude the coverage - Long live the 1st amendment.

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