Cat in the truffula tree

We are minding a cat. It's owner has seen fit to remove to Adelaide, in a post-two-years-in-Canberra flit. It is common, it seems, and if we stay in Canberra for infinity we will have to become resigned to people upping stumps for Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. Presumably people go to other places, but the go-home factor seems strongest for those three.

So this cat is a bit, well, un-relaxed at the best of times. It has calmed down considerable and now only wakes us once at about 3.30 am most nights, and can wait until 6.30 until it miaous for its brekko. But yesterday it went missing, which is the nightmare of cat sitters everywhere. Poor husband (who is a great lover of pets generally) searched, in the rain and cold cold wind, and could not find the cat. Mysteriously, he could hear it miaou, but could not see it anywhere.

I didn't get home until about 8, and I could hear it and a little jingle-jangle of its bell, but no visible cat. Me and the dolphin torch struggled out at about 10.30 pm in the Dark and the Cold and the Wet and called and called and called and there it was, a little, tiny, sad sounding miaou miaou, jingle jingle. But no cat.

And then something, in the corner of my eye, moved. Up high. Up high in the top of a palm tree most like a truffula tree, except kind of taller, and among the fronds twitch twitch of tail.

So now my ugg boots are wet (they are the indoor kind usually) and I am wet and also astonished and the husband starts to clamber up the tree but that is no good because it is a very tall and very thin tree after all. So he pulls on the tree and we are afraid that the cat will caterpault (hee hee) across the road and land splat (not hee hee) and that would be the end of the cat, but then the tree falls over and the husband lands, but more splodge than splat, and the next thing we hear is jingle-jangle running behind the house. And when I open the back door there is a Very Wet Cat Indeed, and a tired and hungry one, waiting to come in the house.

If you go and visit www.bom.gov.au you will see that yesterday was a very not nice day to spend stuck in the top of a truffula tree.

The tree did not spring back but stayed resolutely in two pieces (sorry tree). Luckily there are about another six bits of tree still in the traditionally upright tree position, so it does not leave too much gap in the greenery.

But in happier news, this morning there was snow on the Brindabellas outside and a warm, dry cat resolutely inside.