I screamed bloody murder. Or, at least that’s what Jed says.

Monday morning I walked out onto the back porch to water my dahlia plant, noticing that all the while a squirrel was barking furiously. It wasn’t unusual. Many mornings we’ve woken up to his, or others of his species, clucking at this or that. It’s actually pretty cute… A series of staccato Donald Duck-like “BURK! BURK! BURK!” vocalizations. And they come in series of 5 or 50, depending on the agitation level.

Living on the third floor of an old Victorian means dealing with all the tree-top dwellers, as well as other curious urban fauna. They all don’t get along very well, tend to straddle the line of invasiveness (though one could say that the squirrels, jays, gigantic moths and raccoons were all there long before us), and have a nasty tendency to show up in my peripheral vision at the worst moments.

So as I righted myself after emptying an entire coffee decanter into the flower pot I took notice of the angry squirrel’s location–in the nearest tree, and facing my direction. And he was still BURK!ing and flicking his tail angrily and bobbing up with every ferocious quack. I thought, “Is it me?”. No way. I’ve been charged by a very large and very silent squirrel while hanging clothes out to dry, so if I was the focus of this tree rodent’s aggression he probably would have jumped me at that point. Besides, it was his tirade that woke me up that morning. Whatever was pissing him off was out there before I arrived and was either next to or behind me.

Naturally I took a look around, and at that moment came face-to-face with the offending party. It was a cat with piercing green eyes and a poofy charcoal coat of fur that seemed to black out the rising sun when he exploded off of his perch. As soon as our eyes met he lept into the air in a cloud of hisses and fur and limbs and then went sliding scratching hissing down our very steep roof toward the second floor. After clearing the storm drain he bounced off of an awning, onto the metal spiral staircase, and slid scratched hissed his way into hiding.

Somewhere in there I had emitted a startled “Ah!” that wrenched the normally comatose Jed out of his morning snooze, and as I gasped and chuckled I heard him struggle upright and sleepily yell “Huh? Wha? Nyco? Are you okay?” Of course he has to say that I screamed bloody murder, right?

Fast forward to Friday morning. Jed was out front, waiting to meet our guests and I was inside doing some last minuted tidying up. I figured that he’d locked himself out when my phone rang, but once I answered he cryptically said “Hurry up and come outside. I have a friend you ought to meet.”

And now Wilmot the Stray knows that he doesn’t have to hang out on our roof anymore. Unless he wants to.