Buster & Tigerlily's Great Escape

It was a mostly sunny day in the quiet northern suburb of Dryrock. The neighbours were out in their gardens in full force, and the only clouds in the sky were the gently wafting flakes of char from Derek's failed barbeque attempt.

"Derek, what's the ETA on those burgers?" asked Kevin, who had come by for a barbeque but was increasingly worried about his prospects of being fed something edible.

Derek did not reply. He was gazing deeply into the grill, searching, it seemed for some salvageable piece of meat. At least that was Kevin's interpretation. After a moment, he reached into the cooler for another beer and walked back to the snacks table.

"Hon, I think you might want to try the vegetarian option," Kevin whispered to his wife Juliet.

"No freaking way. I've been skipping meat all week to save the environment. I've earned this. I wouldn't skip that burger if it broke half my teeth."

She paused "... but the kids may be a problem. Where are they?"

Juliet and Kevin both swiveled their heads around to survey the domain. Derek and his wife Karen had a handsome two-floor Cape Cod home with pristine landscaping made possible by their lack of children. The interior was tastefully decorated in modern style, nothing too flashy, or too modern, giving the overall impression of being installed wholesale from a magazine. Derek and Karen shared their home with two cats, Buster and Tigerlily.

One of whom - Kevin could never remember which was which - he spotted in an upstairs window. No, it was not sitting calmly. It was pacing back and forth along the sill, agitated, and Kevin had just glimpsed flashes of movement further back in the room It was then, he saw that the window was ajar. No not ajar, blowing back and forth in the wind. His eyes travelled outward. From the billowing curtain, to the unhooked latch, to the edge, to the branch of the great old walnut tree beyond, to the inevitable, unwelcome sight of first his daughter inching her way towards the trunk and then further in, the source of her interest. Kevin and Juliet's other cat. 

Kevin liked to think he was a normal, well-adjusted, practical man, but in that instant, as his second child was unsteadily inching her way along a tree limb twenty feet in the air, he was immediately gripped by overwhelming terror combined with an irresistable need to take action. Any action.

Juliet had not yet raised her eyes above the ground floor (she was extremely impressed with the crystal vase in the center of the dining table). Kevin decided, after an eternity of internal debate, that shouting "KAYLEE!" would not be the most responsible course of action, and instead instinctively leaped to put himself directly under her. 

Strangely, while his body seemed to be moving in slow-motion, he had ample time to consider how furious he was at Derek (and Juliet) for having a tree limb allowed close enough to a window for a child to climb onto it) and to begin drafting the first page of a very sternly-worded negligence lawsuit.

Having achieved his goal of jumping up and running under the tree limb with only a choked "urrnghh" escaping his lips, Kevin was suddenly unsure what he should say.