Not long ago, our cat climbed the tall trees around our house and refused to come down.

We tried all the tricks:

• Opening a can of tuna and putting it at the base of the tree.
• Standing below and sweet talking it.
• Leaving it alone till it figured out how to come down on its own.

Nothing worked. She cried all day and all night.

It was pitiful.

The first time she did this, I was traveling for the week. My wife called and said, "What do I do?"

"She got herself up there. She'll come down when she's ready," I said.

That advice was filed in the "no-help" category. She called the volunteer fire department. They really didn't want to call out the boys to come drag the cat out of the tree either.

At the end of the second day, I called her back and told her that according to resources on the web, cat's (almost) always come down between the third and fifth day when they get hungry enough.

"FIVE DAYS!?" came roaring through the phone line. "I'm not waiting five days. She'll be dead!"

She was overreacting of course. The cat came down, hungry and tired, and extremely affectionate for an otherwise crabby cat.

"See," I said. "You just have to let nature take care of itself. We didn't have to worry about her. She knew how to solve her own problem."

Two weeks later, I was working from home. The cat went up another tree - all the way to the top! All day, while my wife was at school teaching and I was home, tapping my computer at the kitchen table, while the cat cried outside the window.

On the second day, I stood at the base of the tree and talked to the cat trying to coax her down. With her big eyes locked into mine, she talked back to me as if she were pleading for help. After breakfast I put the little bit of yogurt that remained my bowl under the tree and clanged the spoon against the side of the dish. That sound always draws her.

She looked at me crying even harder. If I could talk CAT, I'm sure she was saying, "Of course, I want that yogurt, you idiot. But do you see me - I'm 50 feet in the air in this huge tree!"

I was feeling pretty helpless.

After lunch, I dragged the 40-foot extension ladder to the tree and precariously positioned it on a slanting hillside so I could get a little higher in the tree. Then, donning a long sleeve shirt and leather gloves, up I went, one shaky step at a time.

The cat went higher.

I stepped on the top rung - right on the yellow sign warning me not to use the top rung as a step - and climbed another 7 or 8 feet up the tree.

As I looked down, I realized I'm a 52-year old seditary man, 20 pounds overweight (on a good day) and about 50 feet off the ground coaxing a scared cat to come a little closer so I can grab her - or worse - so she can grab me.

"This is a disaster in the making," I remember thinking.

Latching onto the cat by scruff of the neck, I held her at arm's length so that her horizontal paws, flailing at me like a small windmill with claws attached, couldn't get me. I shinnied down the big oak leaving deposits of flesh from my one arm wrapped tightly around the bark while peeling the cat off of every limb within paw-reach.

Slowly, and sweating off most of that 20 pounds, we made it to the ground.

When my wife came home, she looked at the tree where the ladder still leaned and said, "Tell me you didn't climb that tree."

I confessed.

"I couldn't take it anymore. The cat needed our help and somebody had to rescue her. She gets scared of something, runs up the tree and can't come down by herself."

She thought for moment, looked at me, and said, "That's Ryan, too, you know."

My youngest son, scared for the moment, climbs a metaphorical tree and can't come down. So, for years I, or another member of his family, climbed up to rescue him.

I hate it when she's right!