The Escape Attempt

In Philadelphia, we had a small back patio. It wasn’t much, but we weren’t complaining — we had a house in a cool city with outdoor space. 

Julie loved going out there and lounging on the concrete. (There was no grass to speak of.) As far as I know, it was her first outdoor experience of any kind. 

The patio was fenced in completely. I gave it a thorough casing before even considering letting Julie out there. But there was one thing I did not account for.

The patio curled along the side of the home, a narrow but traversable alleyway. At the end of the alleyway sat a generator that was about four feet tall. The fence itself was about eight feet tall. 

This was in 2016, and let’s just say it was during Julie’s more voluptuous years. I was sure that she could not jump up to the generator. And in the off chance she could, there would be no way she could clear the fence. 

I was wrong. 

One weekend, my dad was visiting from out of town. He enjoys sitting outside, drinking a beer and reading the paper. This was a Sunday, and he was out there with that day’s New York Times. Angela and I frolicked about the house and the kitchen. The patio door stayed open, which it never did when it was just us. But our routine was altered. 

“Need another beer?” I ask my dad.

“Is the Pope a Catholic?” he says. (This is the kind of thing my dad says.)

I deliver him a cold Shiner Bock.

“Where’s Julie?” I ask. “Is she out here?”

“I don’t know.”

Hmm. I was sure she had been out on the patio, but I haven’t seen her for a few minutes, and I don’t see her inside. 

I don’t know how much time passed between my first realization and my second. Ten seconds? A few minutes? I really have no idea. But then I saw the generator, and the fence, and I wondered. 

I hop on the generator and look into the neighbor’s yard. And you can figure out what I see. 

Julie, on the other side of the fence, looking directly at me. 

I hop over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. (I never once met these neighbors, if you were wondering.) There she is, along the same fence but on the other side. It was quite a jump — there’s no ledge on the top of the fence for her to walk along. She jumped up at least four feet and down eight on the other side, and she could not have anticipated that the latter drop was coming. 

I scurry over to Julie and grab her in what feels like one single, remarkably quick movement. Only after I do this do I realize how merited my urgency was. There’s a gap in the fence in the neighbor’s yard, and she was only a foot or two away from that gap and heading in its direction. The gap enters into an alleyway that I cannot access. The alleyway goes two directions — both out to public streets — unless there are other access points to other backyards en route. Julie was a purely inside cat at that time. She might have panicked and run, and after that, who knows? 

Julie was a few feet away from disaster. 

I think about this moment often. How stupid and reckless was I? Still shakes me up to this day. And it’s affected me ever since then. I’m fanatical about keeping Julie inside. In our Connecticut apartment, I steadfastly refused to let Julie out on the balcony, despite her curiosity. A few times I woke up in the middle of the night and walked to the living room, just to make sure the French doors to the balcony were locked shut. To this day, whenever I can’t find Julie for a few hours, I worry that she somehow escaped.