November Life Update - My Cat on a Power Line

It's STORY time everyone!

With school and work making up the brunt of most of my life, I'm finding time with my lovely wife and at home with the cat to be my most appreciated moments. I'm still heading my local Bronies meetup group - we had a fun Murder Mystery party at the park for Halloween - got totally interrupted in our plans when we discovered a WEDDING going on at the venue we had been planning on. I guess that explains the silence from the park staff; I had been trying to reach the Nature Center we were planning on hosting the event at but they never answered my calls and emails. I'm also enjoying the freedom of creativity I have now that there are no projects with deadlines and people behind them- FEELS SO GOOD to be working on my own time and passions- one of which is an animatic for my local anime convention, Fannatiku Fest - where me and my wife, Beli, both met at (wearing wigs and cosplays). Now, family is really important to me, but nothing causes more drama in life than those you hold dearest, and that includes our son - the furry son - we don't have, nor are planning on having a baby anytime in the near future. Moving on, can I just say that as much as I love our cat, he can drive us NUTS sometimes? Not just because we live in a studio apartment and can't just kick him out of the room when we feel like he's being troublesome, and not just because he likes to keep us awake at night with constant nuzzlings, sitting upon of faces, wiping his FREEZING cold nose on us, or knocking over decorations and portraits, and not because he likes to destroy our furniture and make smelly poos next to the bed. Those are normal drive-you-bonkers slice-of-life details that help you take life tongue-in-cheek. No, what drives me NUTS about this cat is having to put up with his shenanigans that put him in jeopardy.

You see: recently my cat, Mark, gave us the fright of our lives when we couldn't find him one evening, and he spent the night outside. Now, earlier in the morning of Day 1/2, he'd escaped between our legs as we left for work and school in the morning, and we normally keep him inside during the day. Well, we figured, we'd just let him back in when we got home. Problem was, we left around 7:40ish in the morning and didn't get back until 9:30 in the evening. Woops. So when we couldn't find him that night, we set out a Styrofoam cooler with a blanket and his food and water by the front door. While I had a hard time sleeping - getting up every 2 hours or so to check for him, my wife had the best night's sleep ever. say starting day 2/2 I woke up late for work - 6AM, right on the dot to where my shift starts. Craaaap. I rushed into the bathroom, still half asleep and started getting ready as Beli reluctantly left the warmth of the bed and went outside to call for the cat. He responded by meowing off in the distance. Now let me point out that normally our kitten comes running in after we call him, but this time he was just meowing from somewhere in the neighbor's backyard - or somewhere in that vicinity. Beli went back inside but when Mark didn't follow, she went out and called again. This time his little mews sounded a mite frantic, so Beli went to investigate.

Here's the scene I want to illustrate for your imagination - imagine a "T" junction of three backyards, with a power-line pole at the intersecting fences of the lots. In one, our landlord's backyard where we were standing, next door with a large white storage trailer, and behind us with an extended driveway and a tall wired fence. 'Kay, back to the story: Beli had followed the sounds of our adopted cat to this area and begun peeking over the fences and looking around to figure out where the cat had gotten to. At first, because his voice sounded a little quieter than normal, she suspected he was stuck somewhere, and came running over to me and asked me to help look for him. We both go out and sure enough, he's gotta be stuck with how he's crying. But where? We were trying desperately to figure out where the source of noise was coming from, but we couldn't tell if he was under or in the storage trailer, collar snagged or caught on something, or if he was under the car in the back neighbor's yard. He wasn't in the Landlord's yard where we were, that was for sure. Or was he...? Beli had at that moment realized we were standing next to a power line pole that draped large black cords to each of the adjacent houses. Looking up to the top, two pairs of glowing irises confirmed that our cat, our wittle cuddly bud, was on top of an electric death beam, crying down at us in the cold night air.

At this point I was responding, "How- WHY ARE YOU UP THERE?!" After voicing a few other griefs, Beli ran inside to grab my sweater since I was shivering at this point (a long sleeve shirt for work does not make good insulation), and when she came back I put my hands into the sleeves in reverse, holding the bottom out as a make-shift fireman's trampoline. Speaking of fireman, I couldn't help but think that the only way that we were gonna get this cat down was calling 911 and asking for someone from down the street at the station to bring an extra long ladder to get Mark down. I had already called in to work TWICE to say I was going to be late, the second call made to explain the situation. Just as we had given up any hope of getting him down, Mark had made as if he was going to jump, which is like a 25-30 foot drop into the Landlord's yard, 35 feet to the bottom of our neighbor's yard, or 40 ft down to the back neighbor's yard. Stick in the adjoining fences and make the ground not so soft and you can understand our fixated horrific faces as his back legs left the top of the power pole. When he didn't come flying down like super-kitty and splat on the ground, we looked back up at where he had been to realize that he had swung himself Tarzan-style onto the wooden pole, which is a little over a foot and a half wide, I'd say, and looks down at the ground and starts crying. We started calling up to him in encouraging tones to help him stifle his panic, but he started jump-shimmying down the pole, looking down after ever cling, his four limbs stretched out in a hug around the pole and his eyes wide with frantic concentration and effort. A few drops later in a spiral around the log, he safely transfers himself from the power pole to one of the fences, a cinder block wall, about 4 feet from the ground, and just freezes, staring at the ground like it's a million miles away.

I tried to grab him and couldn't because the pole was obstructing my reach, at the same time he was incredibly tense, but after I muttered something about, "-will hate you forever if you can't manage," he made the final leap to our feet, and Beli swooped him up and took him back inside where it was warm and we were at last able to leave so I could get to work (an hour late).

Euuughhhh. So give me a few more gray hairs, but it's worth it still cause I love my little kitty, but SERIOUSLY DUDE! NO MORE STUNTS PLEASE!

/endstorytime.

So that's my November so far! We're leaving next week to hit up Orlando for Disney World for the first time in our lives for a family reunion, and we're very stoked about it~ I'll try to post some pictures if I get anything cool. I inherited me a new iPhone 5 from my dad so my old digital camera from Korea has now been surpassed, sadly enough, but I gotta say I love not having to put up with that old thing's charger and batteries. Iiiiin other news my wife and I are planning on starting a blog - well we've been planning for a while now but I have no idea how to operate Blogger, but the main purpose of the blog will be not only life updates on us, but webcomics and a portfolio website for me. I'm really excited to start it but haven't even begun to work on the coding or layout beyond a photoshop file of composition for where I want everything to go. I'll announce in another journal when it goes live, though, so expect to hear that from me eventually. We've got a wire-bound notebook full of blog comic ideas and gags to illustrate, so there's not a lack of material to draw upon, hopefully meaning plentiful and regular updates, but time will be the judge of that. Let's seeeee... anything else...? OH YEAH. Finished Reading Fallout: Equestria - the fanfic that is longer than Tolkien's The Hobbit AND Lord of the Rings Trilogy combined. And dang was it good! I recommend it, but only if you have as much downtime at your jobs as I do, haha.

So what's up with your lives? Any fun plans for Thanksgiving/fall break? Are you sick of all the tinsel and Christmas-timey stuff BEFORE Thanksgiving? I certainly don't approve, but I'm not letting it get to me. No, not at all.