Luna jumped the garden wall today. And I about simultaneously vomited up my heart.
But let’s back track a bit, shall we?
To those of you who don’t know the situation, my cats were always indoor cats. When I got Rex I lived on the border of town in the sixth story of a ten story apartment building. It was right along a busy highway and I had no terrace, so Rex was naturally an indoor cat.
When we moved to Belgium I saw no reason to change that. CB thought Rex should be able to roam outside like the other neighborhood cats but I’d heard enough cat fights outside and seen enough bad driving in our street to put the kibosh on that one. Then we got Luna. And she was definitely too small to jump the garden wall and leave the backyard so we let her out now and then.
Well, eventually after more than a year in Belgium, I finally decided we could let both cats outside in the backyard so long as we were downstairs and able to keep an eye on them from the kitchen. And that worked just fine until today.
We had a false alram yesterday while I was cooking. I had been glancing out to check on the cats from time to time and at one point I looked out and didn’t see Rex. I called up to CB and said that I couldn’t find Rex, so CB went out the bathroom window and stood on the roof of the extension where our kitchen is to try to see if he could spot Rex on the neighboring rooftops. He couldn’t so I got the ladder and he climbed down into the backyard and then promptly found Rex curled up under a concrete bench in the back corner of the yard which is covered in a thick bramble of nettles, spiders, and other questionable things that I refuse to go near. Crisis averted, everyone as you were.
This morning I was downstairs having breakfast and I let the cats out to play but I faced the kitchen chair directly at the back door and I sat and read while glancing up from time to time to check on things. CB called down that the big male cat (Fat Cat) was on the wall and that I should go check on things. So I went out, saw Fat Cat and saw that our cats were looking at hime but not really responding. Fat Cat left and I went back inside. CB came down and we ended up getting into a fight over something and he went back upstairs while I continued to read, pouting and planning on what I was going to say when I went upstairs. It was then that I looked out, saw Luna up on the table we eat at outside, heard an angry maaauw, and watched helplessly as Luna’s now puffed out tail flew up and onto the wall.
Then a thud and silence.
I flew outside, calling Luna’s name while a surprised Rex just kept looking from me to the wall and back again. I shooed him inside and called to CB that Luna had jumped the wall. He yelled back that I could go find her myself.
Seething, but also worried beyond belief, I ran back out into the yard, climbed up on some cinder blocks and tried looking into the neighboring yard, but saw nothing. I tried calling Luna again and that’s when I heard her cry. I called again, she cried again. A third time. By then I could pinpoint that the cries were coming from a roof, but not our roof, so I ran upstairs, ditched my Birks, called one more time to CB and jumped out the bathroom window onto the roof. I looked to my left and two roofs over I first spotted Felix (I assume that’s who Luna went after) who took off when she heard me coming and then I saw Luna, her tail was huge and she was creeping around a skylight, crying. So I walked over the two rooftops (one of which I felt extreme wood rot and prayed I wouldn’t fall through), scooped Luna up and carried her back home where CB was waiting at the bathroom window.
He brought the ladder downstairs and I climbed down from the roof, still furious with him and vice versa. It’s very strange to simultaneously be so dependant and so angry on the same person all at once. The arguing picked up as we both trudged up the stairs until I saw Luna come out of the office, rubbing on the railing of the stairs. And I started sobbing. Mostly from relief, but also because I had been so scared when I heard her crying. And then seeing Felix out there with her, I had no idea if she was scared or hurt or both, all I could hear was her poor little voice from where I couldn’t reach her and it shook me up so badly. And there was also the whole “jumping out a window and running across 3 rooftops and back and then climbing down ten feet to the yard” thing. Which wouldn’t have been a huge deal normally but I was such a jumble of scared, worried, pissed off and resentful that my adrenaline was pumped up much higher than usual. Plus I haven’t been to keen on putting myself in precarious height positions since I fell down that flight of stairs in May. So CB held me till I was done crying, which wasn’t too long thankfully, and we were able to discuss the issues and end the fight.
And I’ve decided that there’s a very good chance the cats will go back to being 100% indoors.
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