Mongo the Cat gets stuck on roof, and rescued from certain death, twice

Mongo and the Fear Factor

I have this problem.  I am afraid of heights; not so much heights, but heights when they involve me on a ladder.  In college I painted houses for a crazy ex-Catholic priest who had a habit of exclaiming, “goddamit,” more than anyone I have ever met.

On one occasion I almost slipped and fell to my death, forty feet up on the side of an old Victorian style apartment building.  On another occasion, I did fall–two stories, flat on my back with nothing but glossy green fescue to break my fall.  Incredibly, nothing was broken.

Upon hearing the clatter and banging of me and a paint can succumbing to gravity’s pull, the crazy ex-Catholic priest emerged from around the corner of the house and asked me, “Goddamit, what the hell are you doing?!”

“Nothing, father,” I groaned.  “Just taking a little nap.”

We have this cat, Mongo, who was gifted to us when Mongo’s mother showed up at our house a few years back and gave birth to the little idiot on the bottom shelf of a book case in my study.

I have wondered often whether Mongo was the result of an incestuous union.  It would explain a lot.  Like, why does the dumb little thing repeatedly get itself stuck on the roof?

At least twenty times Mongo has gotten on the roof by way of our portico, crawled over to the South side of the house, and dropped seven feet to a portion of roof from which the only way to terra firma is a ten foot drop to the backyard.

Before I had always been able to reach Mongo with a step ladder at the corner of the roof.  It always took a little coaxing on my part, with sweet whispered pleas, but she was having none of it this time.  In addition to being semi-retarded, she is also skittish.

She popped her little knuckle-shaped head over the side of the roof where I had positioned the step ladder.  I climbed up it, and Mongo retreated out of reach to the opposite edge of the roof before I managed to get to the third rung from the top.  I whispered sweet nothings, clicked my tongue, promised I wouldn’t kill her when I get her down, but nothing worked.

The other thing that has worked in the past is a Rube Goldberg contraption involving a long two-by-four resting on one end at the edge of the roof, and the other on the top of the ladder at the corner at the aforementioned opposite edge she runs to to escape my pleading hands.  She was having none of that this time, either.

She had been up there for a little more than forty-eight hours, and a bitter cold front was on its way.

Eventually, I would have to overcome my fears and get out the shiny, like-new extension ladder resting dormant since purchase in our garage.

Some creatures, despite all your best efforts and intentions, will never accept the help they desperately need.

I did eventually tease her over to me, at the step ladder with a small plastic bowl full of dry cat food.  After three days without sustenance, she had enough.  Hunger overcame fear and she went straight for the kibble and bits.  I grabbed her with lightning speed and hauled the half-wit down the ladder.

Mongo and the Inability to Learn from Experience

The hopelessly stunted creature, less than a week later, got stuck on the roof again!  I let her out one evening last week.  Twenty minutes after letting her out I walked out on the back porch to see Mongo meowing distraught from above.

Certain thoughts rushed through my mind.  All of them were confused, angry and un-articulable.  In this way, stupidity is contagious.

I am pretty sure it was Einstein who said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

Once again, as I have done on many occasions before, I hauled out the six foot step ladder and placed it at the corner of the roof where Mongo was perched, howling for salvation.  Mongo tucked tail and scurried out of reach to the opposite edge as soon as I managed to gain three feet on the ladder.

I resorted to the old food trick, and placed a small dish of dry food teetering at the edge of the gutter.  I sat myself down, vigilant, and patiently waited with scotch and a cigar.

Just when it looked like Mongo would emerge to satisfy her hunger, and I was slowly rising to my haunches to strike up the ladder, our neighbor’s little black cat intervened and thwarted my efforts.

The little black cat bounded up the ladder, and leaped to the roof, ate all the cat food, got in a few claws-out swats on Mongo, and descended down the ladder as dexterously as it had previously shot up it.

So, I resolved to wait, and wait, until I judged that Mongo was too hungry to be scared any more, and give it another try, while wondering, which of the two of us is the bigger moron.

Life is hard when you are a prisoner in the jail of your own ignorance.

Unable to summon enough courage to pull out the previously unused extension ladder, I  worried about the possibility of Mongo dying up there, from cold.  If that were to happen, then I would surely have to retrieve the carcass from the roof, and climb up that goddamn extension ladder one way or the other.

In a flash of brilliance–the kind of brilliance that happens only when I feel the most bereft of options–I plotted Mongo’s rescue.  I put a two foot tall plastic Coleman cooler on top of the ladder.  On top of the cooler I put a bowl brimming with cat food and another bowl of water.  And I waited.

She sniffed deeply, leaning over the ledge of the roof.  Her whiskers bristled, and she jumped.  Mongo, Friskies and Coleman cooler fell from the ladder and crashed to the ground.  Mongo bolted for cover under my car in the driveway.

She’s inside now, enjoying the warmth, curled up in a ball, and taking a cat-nap of epoch proportions.

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