Too much excitement for me!

Well, I'm pretty proud of myself because I have been working on my summer bucket list.  I have had my garage sale, visited family, and attempted working on the backyard landscape.  By attempted, I mean I began but had a little bit of an emergency during that time.  I was all ready to tackle that backyard and my cat (who is an indoor cat), but loves to go outside with us at times really wanted to go out.  So, I brought him with me to the backyard.  As I'm working he is supervising me as you can see in the photo below (please ignore the disaster of a backyard-remember I'm trying to work on it).  

I continue to work checking on him now and then.  Then I see him walking off so I go to see what he is doing.  He goes over to the fence and climbs over it into the neighbor's yard before I can grab him.  The problem with that is that the neighbor has a big dog that is very nice but hasn't been around cats.  UGGGHHH!!!  

Neighbor's dog

I panicked as I was trying to decide what I should do.  You see my cat is used to being around our 2 lovely Siberian Husky dogs shown below.  They have been trained to be nice to him, so he thinks that all dogs are kind and nice.  

Our Siberian Husky dogs that my cat is used to being around and has this idea that all dogs are like them.  

I looked into the backyard of my neighbors and my cat was just walking around the yard like no big deal and I see the dog off to the side sleeping.  I knew that my neighbor wasn't home, so I went back to her backyard to try and distract the dog.  I was playing with him and trying to get him distracted with a toy while I thought I would be able to swoop over and gradually grab my cat.  Not the case, he spotted my cat before I could get to him and off he went chasing my cat.  My cat ran and tried to get out of the fence (instead he hit the fence and bounced back), hissed at the dog and ran way way way way up in the tree.  My cat has never climbed a tree in his life so I guess his instincts just kicked in (which I was glad that they did).  

High in the tree-didn't get the full picture of the tree, but it is over 16 feet high because when I got our 16 ft. high extension ladder out it wouldn't reach him.  He was probably another 10 feet higher.

Meanwhile, you could imagine my panic as I'm running around in the backyard trying to catch my cat and keep him safe.  Now, another problem, my cat was way up in the tree.  I got ahold of my neighbor to see if I could get her dog out of the backyard so that maybe my cat would come down (there was no way he would come down with the dog there).  Luckily, we have nice neighbors and she was fine with it.  So, I got the dog out of the backyard and tried to coax my cat down.  He wasn't budging.  I called my husband at work still panicking and wondering if the fire department would come get him down (I figured he had never climbed a tree before and probably wouldn't be able to get down by himself).  My husband tried to calm me down and tell me that he would probably come down when he was calmed down and to just stay and wait by the tree.  So, I waited and waited......3 1/2 hours later.....my cat began to meow like he wanted to come down but didn't know how to get down.   Finally, he climbed down halfway and then stopped where he was at and of course I still couldn't reach him.  When my husband got home, he got the extension ladder out and climbed up to rescue him.  So a total of 4 hours he spent up in the tree and I spent waiting for him to come down.  Needless to say, I didn't get my backyard done, but I was so glad that my cat stayed safe.   I believe he got a little stressed as well and was relieved when it was all said and done, can you tell? 

Hope you have a great week!