Writing prompt: cat stuck in a tree
Casey stood in his backyard, thumbs hooked into belt loops and pulling against fraying threads. He gazed upward, head tilted back for so long a twinge of complaint had begun to pulse in his neck, into the treeline that bordered the lawn that had seen better days.
Among the branches sat the small grey tabby that had made her home on his porch. She stared down at him, sharp green eyes small for distance but ones he knew were narrowed in what may have been amusement. Her bottle brush tail swayed a lazy pendulum, sweeping up twigs and autumnal leaves in the tangled mess of fur. She would never hold still long enough for him to brush out the mats, before she writhed and twisted and vanished into the woods. Until she returned a day or two later, her paw steps jaunty and her tail held high in her own little triumph.
He was familiar with cats. Never owned one himself; his mother never had the time nor patience for such things, and as he had grown older the pieces fell as they will. No time, no energy, no reason. Childhood friends had owned them, and he had stolen affection from them where he was able. Ran clumsy adolescent fingers between the ears and scratched at chins. Woken during sleepovers with a weight on his chest, buzzing with a contentment he could never hope to match.
It was just his luck then, he thought, that a neighborhood stray would pick him for her favorite. Some mornings he would catch her dozing in one of the cheap chairs he kept out, on the off chance a guest would stop by for a visit. Others he would find her lounging in a sunspot that cut through a sparse garden. She would awaken, then, eyes sharp and narrow and intelligent, as though to say "can I help you?". As though to accuse him of some sort of disruption, before returning to her own business.
She watched him from her perch in the tree. God only knows how she had managed to scale the tree; God only knows what possessed her to do such a thing. Her yowling had hooked into him, a panic that something had happened on his property rising in his throat as he ran outside, tripping over himself in his haste. But there she was, sitting atop a high branch without a care in the world. She had called to show him her accomplishment.
Which left him with a dilemma: how the hell to get her down now that she was up there.










