Good Grief!

Last night the cat nearly made me nuts.  I always call him in when it's time to go to bed.  And he always comes runnin'.  This time, however, he did not.  I called and called and called and called.  No Sebastian.  Although I was trying to keep a lid on it, my husband knew that as more time went on, I was getting more upset.  So, he too went out and called for him while he was putting the trash to the curb and walking the dog.  No cat.  I even stayed up late.  It was 10 and way past my bed time, when I had resigned myself to opening a bedroom window so I could might maybe hear him in the middle of the night - if he came home.  I went out one last time and called him and poof!  There he was. 

All was right with the world again.  He had no explanation for his late arrival, but that's a cat for ya!

So this morning, when I let  him out we had a talk and he really seemed to understand.  But, when I called him for breakfast, he was a no show again.  I really just couldn't believe it.  I called again and this time had a meow in response.  Unfortunately, it came from the woods that are just next to the road and as many more times as I called his name, Sebastian wouldn't come to me, all he would do was meow.  And we're not talking about hey, nice to see ya meows.  We're talking ME-Ows!  I thought, oh, my God, has he gone out in the road and gotten hit by a car?

So, in my PJs (I did pull a sweatshirt over me so as not to scare little children) I went down the driveway to the woods.  Every time I called his name, he meowed and I'm looking down in the bushes, behind branches and no cat.  Finally, I looked up.  There he was in a tangle of vines, about ten feet above the ground.  And he couldn't get down.

As soon as my eyes were on him he ME-Owed again, like well, what are you going to do to fix this mess I've gotten myself into.  At least he was taking responsibility for the mess, I thought.  At first I held out my arms to him, hoping he'd jump down to me, but then I thought, oh, no, that won't do, because I'll be shredded when he lands!  There was no directing him, so I said, stay there, I'll be back. 

I hotfooted it back to the house and grabbed a cushion from a lawn chair, hotfooted it back down again and back into the woods.  I held the cushion up over my head and said "Co'mon" and he'd respond "ME-Ow" and I'd say "Co'mon" and he'd "ME-Ow".  And on and on like that for like five minutes.  I almost moved the cushion once to see what he was doing, but thought, no, the minute you do that, you're going to get a face full of falling cat.  So I held my ground and finally he worked up the courage and jumped.

The cushion, of course, began to collapse in the middle between my arms, but I was able to give him enough of a break that he then jumped from the cushion down to the ground.  And then he laid down, panting, looking at me like, WOW, mom, that was amazing!  I tell ya, it was almost as if he'd been up on the parallel bars at the Olympics!

Sadly, no pictures of the event.  But, here's what our Sebastian looked like recently:

He likes to play stick

This is what he did after sticking his landing