Postcards from the Rogue Valley

“There’s a big orange cat stuck in a tree a few houses up,” a neighbor walking down our street told me as I carried geranium pots from my car.  “Does it belong to you?”

While not ours, I knew the cat she was referring to. His owners call him Lux but we call him Reds, the name of an old orange cat we fostered years ago.

Reds entered our life through the cat door belonging to our formerly indoor Brooklyn cat. We had a second cat at the time who was killed this past summer by a cougar. (Tony and I had decided it was better to let our cats run free and suffer the consequences than watch the world through a window. It was a tough choice…not to mention the birds.)

He moved right in without asking permission. Our cats, uncharacteristically unterritorial, paid no mind. So for the past two years, he’s arrived like clockwork at 7 am, finishing whatever breakfast our cat(s) — Pesto is the name of the one who remains — left behind, then stretching out on our bed to catch more sleep. Over the course of the day, Reds comes and goes as he pleases, hits Pesto’s dry food dispenser when hungry, demurely asks for affection, and acquiesces when we send him home at night. 

The first time I laid eyes on Reds (a.k.a. Lux) he was walking across the meadow that we share with our neighbors. 

“Come look at the small fox,” I called to Tony. 

“Are you sure it’s a fox?” he replied. 

It wasn’t. 

The next day I found the not-a-fox sitting in our backyard: it was a big, Maine Coon cat (a breed that is preternaturally large to begin with), known not just for its size but also for its gentle nature. “Gentle Giants,” they are called. A week ago, I’d jumped on our bathroom scale with Lux and, when I subtracted my weight, I came up with 22 lbs. He’s more than two feet long, not counting his tail.

I went up the street to investigate the cat in the tree and, as I suspected, spied Lux, calmly mewing on a branch twenty-five feet up. I texted his owners, Mike and Jen, and Jen joined me. By then, several other neighborhood cats — who also like to hang around our house — had taken up a vigil at the bottom of the tree trunk. 

“Here Lux-ie. Here Lux-ie,” Jen called up to him. He meowed back, but it seemed doubtful that his gentle nature would overcome his fears of backing down the tree, something I read online even the bravest cats rued. Looking down at us with his tall tufted ears, he now resembled an owl more than a fox.

What to do? The Ashland Fire Department said it no longer rescued tree-bound cats. The Animal Rescue Society said that they had never rescued cats in trees; they lacked the equipment. Three arborists did not return Jen’s calls.

Night fell and with it a cold, heavy rain (the rain we’ve been lusting after for months in drought-stricken Southern Oregon). We took turns checking on Lux, nestled against a branch high above with the rain now matting his orange fur coat. Figuring out how he got there wasn’t going to get him down, I reminded myself.

Yesterday morning, still cold and rainy, Mike texted me to say that he had a plan and they were heading to the tree. He’d pulled together his rock climbing equipment, which he hadn’t used in years, and worked out a system of climbing ropes and pulleys attached to a large canvas cat carrier which, if he was successful in grabbing Lux and getting him into the carrier, would lower him to the ground. 

I arrived to see Mike two-thirds of the way up a 35-foot extension ladder, wrapped in a climbing harness and carrying webbing and cords. From the ground, Jen managed the rope attached to the cat carrier.

Ten minutes later, Lux was back, staring out from the cat carrier and gulping wet food from a bowl.  After high fives and hugs, the neighbors who had gathered headed back home, along with the cats who had kept watch. It was an exciting start to an otherwise dreary day.

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Before Lux stole the show, Tony and I had been watching the does and geese who, since early April, had taken up positions in our community meadow.

The does, four in all, arrived first. From dawn to dusk they browsed the meadow inch by inch, avoiding the dandelions but savoring the grass. No longer juveniles but not yet mothers (or so it seemed), they stayed in a group, within which each kept to herself. At night, they retreated to a space under a neighbor’s deck rather than heading back into the forest a stone’s throw away. 

We nicknamed them “the four Sisters.”

Since moving to Southern Oregon, where deer are omnipresent, I’d learned that “sexual segregation” — the separation of males and females into different social groups outside the breeding season — is de riguereamong deer. We rarely ever see bucks (we quip that they’re off playing video games) in our meadow, but there are days in the that two or three “four pointers,” as they are called here, take their ease in our back yard and occasionally lock horns in play while our cats look on.

The Canadian geese, though, are a different story.

One day the second week of April, a lone goose honking for all to hear landed at the head of the meadow and remained, largely motionless, for most of the day. He returned the next day and the next, then disappeared. (We assumed by his size that he was a male.)

A week later, a pair of Canadian geese with their long black necks and signature white chinstrap swooped in. Aware that Canadian geese mate for life, we figured that they were betrothed, maybe on their honeymoon. They honked, kissed (well, pecked) and flapped their wings with never more than a foot separating the two. Sometimes they strutted around the meadow with heads held high, the male invariably in the lead. 

This daily performance went on for a week until another pair of young lovers swooshed down, settling near the first pair and repeating the same attachments. We assumed they were young and not middle-aged, nursing the grudges that can accumulate over time.

Then one morning, the solo goose we’d seen before (or so we like to think it was the same goose) crash landed and spent the day going from one couple to the other, pestering and making entreaties that ended in loud squawks. Castigated by his peers for not following the rules (we conjectured), he made a hasty retreat. We figured we’d never see him again.

The other day, though, lo and behold, he reappeared with his own bride (or so we like to think), the two of them honking boisterously and seeming to dance a jig. 

The does never looked up from their foraging to welcome the newlyweds. Tony and I, on the other hand, toasted all six.

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