A Furry Visitor

I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me when I saw THIS out our kitchen window on the second week in December:

The kids and I were amazed to see this cat perched way up in a pine tree behind our house.  It took them a while to spot it, but Grace thought it was CRAZY and when Josh finally spied it he said, "Whoo!  Whoo!"  :)  An owl with whiskers?

We left it alone the first day, and when it was still there the second day, my neighbor and I started making calls to neighbors to see if they knew who he belonged to or if we should help it get down...  We were advised to put tuna fish at the base of the tree to tempt it down...but when I delivered the grub, THIS is the look I got from our high maintenance (?) guest.  I'm pretty sure its nose literally went up in the air.

Finally, on day three, Jeff got tired of hearing me worry about this cat and decided to go practice some firefighter skills.  I really wish I would've followed through with getting the video camera going, because if I had, I'm sure we would've won some money on America's Funniest Home Videos.  As Jeff climbed within reach of the cat, it jumped (flew?) from its perch to the top of the neighbor's swing set, hit it hard, flipped--a large flying squirrel???--and landed on the ground.  We all held our breath for a millisecond before it took off running through the yard to escape.

And there's no closure to this story.  Like a bad breakup, the cat was POOF! out of our yard--and lives--forever.  We keep our eyes peeled as we drive through the neighborhood...thinking we may spy him...but we're pretty sure if he survived that fall he's back to sitting on some foofy pillow eating kitty snacks that are spoon-fed to him.  :)