Ode To Oz: The Stray Who Got Stuck Up A Tree

One evening while walking our dogs in Riverside Park several years ago, my friend and I heard panicked meowing at the entrance.

Following the sound, I found a kitten stuck up a large oak tree. Since it was huddled on a branch too high for us to reach, we decided to finish our walk and hope the kitten would find its way down. But when we got back to the tree, it was still there, crying.

Ten-year-old me would have already climbed the tree, but nearly 50-year-old me knew climbing wasn’t an option. And as I stood there wondering how I could help the kitten, my farmer friend Doug said he had an idea — and came back carrying a large plastic garbage can from the bed of his truck.

That was cool.

Because Doug, though he was in his 70s, put the can upside down under the tree and climbed on top of it.

Even cooler? When the can still didn’t get him close enough to reach the kitten, Doug stood on it for at least another 10 minutes, cooing and calling until finally, when we were just about to give up, the kitten moved down the branch toward him so he could grab it.

And hand me the softest bundle of fur I have ever felt — fur that began purring immediately as I held it to my chest; fur that I never wanted to let go.

But while I learned later that the kitten had been stuck up the tree for at least two days, that night we decided the best thing to do was to let him go and see if he went home. So I put the kitten on the ground, he scurried off, and we left the park.

Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about the kitten I held. More importantly, I couldn’t imagine telling my husband that we pulled a kitten out of a tree, then just let him go. So, after stopping at the store, I went back to the park to see if the kitten was still there.

When I returned to the tree it was dark outside, so I got out my phone as a light and called to the kitten. Almost immediately he came running out of the darkness toward me, and I picked him up again. Only this time I tucked that soft, purring fur under my sweatshirt and took it home.

“Whaaaaa?” said my husband as he opened the door to a kitten in my hands, his face fighting off sympathy for the tiny creature. Because while I assured him the kitten was only staying the night, he knew that once it came through the doorway, we would fall in love.

And of course he was right. Because within an hour I had already given him a name.

But first I fed him, then gave him a bath after finding he was covered in fleas. Then while watching him slowly begin to strut around our house I began calling him Oz, because he reminded me of the werewolf character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, another tiny-yet-tough guy.

Still, we tried to resist getting another animal. And once we were sure he didn’t already have a family, we decided it was best to take the kitten to the animal shelter so they could find him one.

But on the day I was supposed to take him to the shelter, I couldn’t. Because by then, Oz had begun playing with the dog. And watching that tiny orange cat play with our big black dog not only gave me joy, I knew that finally having a live-in playmate was giving the dog much joy as well.

So when my husband called me on his lunch break to ask if I had already taken the kitten to the shelter, I started to cry.

“No —

“Thank god,” he said. “I was calling to tell you not to!”

“OK,” I said, smiling.

He sighed. Then, because our wedding anniversary was that weekend, he said: “Well, happy anniversary!”

So, for our ninth anniversary, we gifted ourselves a fluffy mound of moxie. And since one of the traditional gifts for that year is willow wood, it seems appropriate that he was plucked from a tree.

Sad update: Oz died last month of heart failure, soon after we learned he had the same condition that took our sweet Sasquatch earlier this year. And when we had another fluffy boy cremated, this time the hospital saved us some of that super soft fur.

That was cool.

Because I couldn’t be with Oz at the end, and having a piece of him to hold afterward helped me say good-bye.