911....What's Your Emergency?

As I was going through old photographs recently, I came across some pretty funny/not to mention really old pics of some fire fighters that came to our house. Why were they posing in front of their truck, in front of our house? Well, there's a really good explanation for that, really there is....

It all happened about 14 years or so ago, while we were living at our old house and involves a little kitty cat named Josie. Josie loved climbing up things. It took me forever to train her not to climb up on the kitchen counters (squirt guns work wonders when training cats, by the way). Josie would climb up the Christmas tree and knock it over and then innocently cuddle on the couch looking oh so cute, while I yelled at Amanda and Anthony who were around 2 and 3 at the time, for playing with the tree. She also loved being outside.

So, now that I'm pretty sure you know where I'm going with this, trees....cats....fire departments.....Let's just skip ahead to the climax of the story, shall we. Josie climbed up a tree in our yard. A tree that was well over 40 feet high (I'm guessing). And proceeded to get stuck in said tree. Everyone walking down the street could hear her meowing. This tree went straight up, there weren't any low branches to grab ahold and climb. And she went up so high that our little 10 foot ladder couldn't even begin to reach her. As the meowing got louder and the kids crying for their cat got louder, I starting looking in the phone book for a phone number for the fire department. Hey, it works on tv and in cartoons...Right?

Only problem is we live in a small town with volunteer fire fighters. They aren't on duty all the time and there isn't any way to just call them. My only option was to dial 911. I know what you're thinking...Oh my God, she called 911 to get a cat out of the tree.... Oh yes, I did. What else was I going to do?



So the guys came to our house with their big ladder truck, climbed up and got Josie out of the tree and of course I just had to take some pictures of the big event, you know to further embarrass myself......Did I mention that our old house was across the street from the fire department? Or the fact that Rich went to school with a couple of the guys? Yeah, that Rich married a real ditzy blonde one, didn't he....Lucky boy! I guess the beauty of living in a small town is that gossip only lasts until the next good bit comes around, at least I didn't have to live that one down for long.