I
t was our neighbor’s daughter who found her. Pointing her finger straight up to the sky she said, “There she is!” And there she was, about fifty feet high off the ground, our six-month old kitten, Maya, stuck in a tree where she would spend the next three days and two nights (one of those nights it rained).

Here’s what I learned about kittens stuck in trees:

Common wisdom is once they are hungry enough (even if it takes three to four days) they’ll conquer their fear and come down. Therefore, firefighters won’t come to the rescue and tree service people will talk you out of spending $125 hiring them to get the kitten down.

Cats can stand at the edge of a cluster of branches, peer out onto the ground below, and not freak out. They can walk a fat branch for exercise and lie down on it to nap and not freak out. But try to coax them into shimmying backwards down the tree to get to the ground in under a minute and they’ll yawn, cry, and protest.

When the cat gets bored with your efforts to rescue her, she’ll watch the birds filling the trees around her or study the people, dogs, and other cats walking on the street. She’ll even turn her back on you to entertain herself with these diversions.

Fifty feet straight up in the air is a lot taller than it looks. Pitching a branch or rock tied to a rope to haul a basket up will likely get you whacked on the head or a wrenched knee, but it will not get that rope up there. Husbands who climbed every tree in sight as a boy think that, at sixty-eight, climbing trees not meant for any human to climb is a good idea.

But if he can climb a smaller tree and connect the two trees with a two-by-four that lays on a branch just a couple of feet below her on day three when she’s really getting frustrated and aggravated, she’ll study that bridge and choose to take it.

Here’s how my kitten taught me to choose love:

On Day 1 we were frightened. When dusk fell on our kitten up in that tree, it seemed inhumane to leave her there. We had discovered her in the tree at 5:30 p.m. and, with a break for supper, spent three hours trying to coax her down. Neither of us slept well. I spent what felt like the whole night sending her pictures of how to shimmy down the trunk backwards until she could reach a safe distance to jump. That was how I got her out of a tree when she and I met! It wasn’t working this time.

We spent Day 2 full of hope and trying all kinds of things to get her down. It seemed that if we absolutely had to wait for her to get hungry enough – even if it took three to four days – we could manage. Then night fell and with it came rain.

On Day 3 we woke up angry. Mad at her and taking it out on each other. We are emotionally mature enough to recognize displaced anger and grief but all we could do was manage apologies after short temper flares.

By the third day, I didn’t think I could take it anymore. We had the option of leaving a message with the one tree service man that would come that evening, but Joseph wanted to wait until we had tried absolutely everything – including things he hadn’t thought of yet.

That choice of his made me angry with him. All his ideas kept putting him up in that tree or a nearby one and it didn’t seem to matter what words of stress came out of my mouth every time he got up in that tree, he could not comprehend that I felt bullied by the stress of repeatedly seeing both him and Maya in harm’s way.

I could not be the dutiful wife, cheering her husband on for “being the man.” As far as I was concerned, he couldn’t see or hear me. All he could do was keep trying everything he could think of to get that cat out of that tree.

When he built the bridge between the trees, he insisted I go ahead and shower and get ready for work and let him accomplish his task. “I promise that smaller tree is no problem. I’m perfectly safe up there!”

I took my shower and cried the whole time about how selfish he was and how he wouldn’t take me into consideration.

In the meantime, he got that bridge built and before I went to work asked me to give him a break coaxing her down. When I went outside she was already in the smaller tree, hollering like mad!

At last, sweet relief!

Of course, it was a huge relief to have her back in the house. On the way to work, I was struck with how painfully exhausted I was. Probably because I was no longer manufacturing the adrenaline needed to get through those three stressful days. All that worry over her being stuck and his gladiator efforts to save her had created a whole lot of toxicity that also now had the chance to spill out.

Because I tend to over think things, I studied how I reacted to the stress of him going up in those trees the number of times and ways that he did. I analyzed it from every angle. I even studied it for weaknesses in our relationship.

And then I had a sweet epiphany. I stopped thinking about it and said to myself, “If I am not abiding in love, I am abiding in fear. There is always the option to make another choice and, once again, choose love.”

Over those three days, I was offered over and over and over again the choice for either love or fear. I kept choosing fear. The first night, when I mentally sent her a picture of how to get down out of that tree for the 500th time, I was as stuck as the kitten was – stuck in fear and worry. When I felt manic over Joseph climbing the trees, I was as stuck as the kitten – stuck in fear and worry.

However, when I chose to keep my process of my feelings to myself, trusting my process to work them out, then I began to choose love over fear. I blew it now and again – we both did with the anger that popped up on Day 3 – but we never dropped into arguing about being angry or about how we were relating to each other. That was a choice for love.

And when my intuition gave me the sentences, “If I am not abiding in love, I am abiding in fear. There is always the option to make another choice and, once again, choose love,” that was love winning.

Earlier today in conversation Joseph said, “It’s good to see you smile.” I guess he’d been paying attention to me all along.

His mode of operating is to trust me to my process rather than open a scary door by asking what’s wrong. Actually, we both operate that way. I practice trusting him to his process rather than risk being rejected by entering his psychic “man cave” too soon. These are also choices for love.

Maya is named after the Goddess of Illusion. This week she had me facing the illusion of fear so that I could choose love. I think I have to have a talk with this kitten about the meaning of her name and sweeter, softer ways to play with it!