Cat on a Hot Shingled Roof

With the warmer days of early Spring come unusual activities within the wild kingdom of Douglas Park.

Early this morning, one neighbor posted the following FYI on our neighborhood listserv.

"Just saw a very fast fox chase a black cat across my backyard [1700 block of South Pollard Street].            Hopefully the cat was faster than the fox. Providing as an FYI for those who have outdoor pets."

A reply to her FYI by a second neighbor reported another concerning event:

"A few days ago a huge vulture feasted for a long time on a dead squirrel on the roof of a neighbor's backyard building on South Monroe near South 12th Street."

So imagine my concern when I arrived home on this first 80 degree day of 2026 to some breaking news of our own: the more adventurous of our two seven month old kittens had stranded herself on our front porch roof! 

Apparently she'd pushed through a screen in the upstairs office window and could not figure out how to get back inside. Fortunately, my son heard her distressed meows when he headed outside to take his daily walk and was able to coax her back inside from upstairs.

So now we have collectively placed restrictions of 1-2 inches on bottom-up window maneuvers, favoring instead the safer top-down maneuvers for the foreseeable future!