Every day I meet pet owners who share wonderful stories. I hope to have some interesting tails (or is that tales) to share with you. Recently it occurred to me that there are a large number of pets named "Lucky." I have thought that it is probably because most of them have been adopted from a shelter and have indeed become lucky in having a new family who cares for them. But for some, lucky is what they are in surviving a harrowing experience.

Last week, minutes before I was to leave for work, I looked out my kitchen window and much to my surprise was startled to see my neighbor's black cat sitting on top of their second story roof! It had been raining hard and she obviously was going to get very wet if the rain let loose again. I called my neighbor at her work place to tell her that when she came home she might have trouble finding her cat since she would probably not think to look on the roof. After I hung up I looked again, and by now she had climbed to the peak of their three story house and was hanging around the chimney. I left and worried for the next several hours. Would she slip and fall? Would she get soaking wet?

Apparently I missed a lot of drama. I am told the neighbors on the other side noticed the cat as well because she started getting distressed and made a lot of noise. These neighbors were having some remodeling done, so there was a contractor at their home. All attention went to the rescue. Recall, I mentioned this was a three story house. The cat got on the roof by discovering an open window. The contractor, with the help of my neighbor (his client), put up a ladder and went up on the roof. Somehow he reached the cat and got it down to the second story, where he was able to get the window open wider and toss her back in. Personally, I would have been afraid of the height - not to mention how frightening it would have been to grab a scared, nervous cat with all its claws on a wet slippery roof.

So who here is really lucky? The cat, the contractor, or the neighbor to get her cat down safe and sound? It wasn't until I found a plate of cookies on my porch with a note thanking me for the phone call (a minor thing in the scheme of things) signed "Lucky", that I learned that this was the name of the cat, who by the way, had been adopted from the Humane Society.