Why tiny cats don't belong in tall trees.

Seriously. I think the higher powers are trying to make me lose my jobs. Each morning I wake up thinking "omfg I have soooo much work to do today" - and then something happens that makes the hours fly by without me getting barely anything done at all.

Today, the higher powers sent Sotis my way. Sotis. How I hate that little bastard! Hate him! He's our neighbours' cat and he's completely mental. Really, he is. He almost killed our kitty when she was a baby and we had to take care of her day and night for weeks and weeks, he's attacked me in our house when I tried to get him off of our other cat that he was beating the living crap out of, and he still won't leave my babies alone.

This morning, I was sitting at our kitchen table writing a ton of e-mail for work, when I heard a loud "miiiiiiieeeeeeeeeooooooooooow!!!" and some really omnious noises. I stormed out just to see Sotis - gaaaah, Sotis - halfway up the enormous pine tree outside our house. I was running towards the tree, (obviously) yelling and swearing, and that little creep climbed down and ran off like someone had lit his behind on fire.

And way, way, waaaay up in the tree sat my poor kitty Biianka, scared to death and unable to get down. You see, like most cats, she's a great climber - as long as we're talking climbing upwards. It's the getting down that is the problem. (Once, I climbed a very, very, very tall tree in the middle of the night just to get her down. My mom wasn't too thrilled about that. And who was the reason for her being in that tree? Well, guess. Gaaah. Sotis.)

Nothing to do but go get a ladder, climb up as high as I could and try and encourage her to come down. "Cooome on, Sweetie! Good girl! You can do it! Cooome on! Good girl! Come on now!" 

You might think it's totally inappropriate that I have photos of this event - shouldn't I be focusing on my poor baby instead of taking photos? Yeah, sure, you have a point. But in my defence - I didn't exactly spend five minutes on that ladder. I was up there for three hours. During, like, two hours and fifty-five minutes of those three hours, exactly nothing happened. Biianka was up on her branch, looking all freaked out. I was doing my "pleeeease come to mommy"-thing. It got a little old after a while.

Then she decided to go for it! I was like, "awesome, baby! But you know that's not going to work! Remember what we talked about, honey? Ass first while climbing! Aaaaass fiiiirst! The other way around!"

Well, it did work. At least a little. She did end up a couple of branches down.

Hmmm... "Now what, mommy?!"

Then I told her big brother, who had been hanging out on the ground acting all worried - and who's an awesome climber, by the way, he's just like a giant squirrel up there! - to get up there and help his baby sis out.

And, well, he did. He wasn't helping out much in the whole getting-Biianka-down-business, but he did keep her company.

Which I thought was quite the relief, because I was starting to get a little anxious. As you can see, Biianka was starting to act a bit like a lunatic. Sticking her tounge out, crazy eyes, making weird squeaking sounds!

But she wasn't going mental! Quite the opposite, actually - those weird noises and faces just meant that she'd had an idea. A great idea. A thought had popped up in her head - something about "ass" and "first". I'm not going to dwell on the fact that I had told her a thousand times how to get down - you know, she's a cat, they have other things on their minds than listening to their mom all the time.

And she did it! After almost exactly three hours, she remembered how to get down! She didn't have to climb very far before I could finally reach her from the top of the ladder and take her down with me.

Silly, silly, silly, silly, silly kitty! But now all is well and maybe, maybe, just maybe (knock on wood) I can get some work done. Keep your fingers crossed for me...