Kitty in a Crown

Great start to a beautiful day!

Pieface pulled me out from between the down comforter and the heated waterbed early this morning with his high pitched demand for breakfast. Usually I just leave him shouting, but I didn't think it was fair to wake up our prodigal son in the downstairs bedroom, what with our promise he could sleep in after taking the red-eye from the other side of the nation. I wasn't sure he could sleep through screaming dogs as well as he can wailing sirens.

Once the dog was quietly munching his kibbles I could hear a faint cry, "Help me! find me! Find Popeye!" (Popeye is the accepted kitten in my post June 23, 2009. Named after the scrappy cartoon character with an anchor tattoo. Popeye was "anchored" to the vine when I found him.) He'd been missing for two cold nights and out of sick bay for only a week. We'd been hoping this bouncy little fellow had found a new home and not a bad end. The way he sounded, it had been a close call.

I trapped Pieface in the patio pepper plant corral; the site of our failed garden experiment (a huge plant and one pepper grown in a big bag of pot soil). I didn't need his kind of help if Popeye was inside the dog's fence, and he was: in the crown of a gnarly cedar. He must have met Pieface on Tuesday and wisely taken, then kept, refuge in the tree. And though he was relieved to see me, he could not find the courage to climb down. I had to climb up. Lucky for us, the extension ladder was still behind the house and the tree was sturdy. Bond steadied the ladder and I didn't have to persuade Popeye to come down to me, just to let go of the tree.

Like it or not, Popeye went back in sick bay in case his new cough is contagious.

Later, Bond presented our sleepy guest coffee and the image of

his parents with a big ladder and Pieface up a tree.

That's some bird dog!