Cat On a Pole

We’d been in Williams Lake, British Columbia less than a month when we had an unlikely encounter with a cat, an experience which pictures the contrast between God’s glory and human glory. This post wraps up a three-part series which began with What Do You Say to a Weeping Stranger.

Home was a 12×50 foot trailer we had hauled 2300 miles from Nebraska. We installed it at the Kendall Acres mobile home park high above the town. Our assignment—Alkali Lake Reserve—lay forty miles south on the Dog Creek Road. Two or three times a week we spent an hour each way bumping over gravel roads that exacted revenge on our 1972 Olds Cutlass for the pounding of log trucks.

One November day we were maybe a mile from home, weaving the curvy road between homesteads and small farms cut out of the woods, when we rounded another bend and spotted a cat perched at the top of a utility pole. When we returned a couple of hours later the feline was still there. And still there two or three days later when we set out for Alkali again.

Williams Lake is 200 miles north of the border. November in Williams Lake is like January in Wichita–near freezing. Something had to be done.

The firefighter who answered my call to the fire station rebuffed my request. The cat would come down when it was ready. But we weren’t convinced, decided to attempt a rescue with our own resources.