My cat will not leave my lap.

I claim he is fairly affectionate for a cat. The rest of my family seems not to think so, so perhaps he is a one-person cat. I got him used, and I suspect John, his former owner, saw quite similar behavior.

As I said before, we were camping last weekend, so I made sure Gizmo was in the house, left him sufficient food and far too much water, and bade him goodbye. When we got home Sunday afternoon I unpacked the truck, laid the sleeping bags out over the porch rails and sat at the computer to catch up on some work. Seconds later, Gizmo was in my lap and would not leave for some 20 minutes, no matter what shifting had to be done around him.

He is in the same mode as I type. I suspect it is leftover trauma from the night he spent in a tree at the end of our driveway.

I returned from work about 1 a.m. Saturday and heard meowing. Fine, I thought, expecting to see a cat trotting up the driveway to come in with me.

He never came any closer (OK, right now his throat is resting on my left wrist and this is a bit awkward) so I went to investigate. Didn’t sound hurt. Did sound … high. About 12 feet high, actually, and I’d never seen him climb a tree before. No reassurance would coax him down, so in the tree he stayed.

About 6 hours later he was 4 feet lower on a neighboring trunk, still quite vocal, still unwilling to chance things farther. I shooed away the brazen neighbor cat and went in to do an hour’s work in my bathrobe before pursuing any sort of rescue.

Shortly after I looked up through the window and saw a ladder leaned against the tree, with my husband at the top. Neighbor cat was up there, too, on a nearby trunk, and perhaps the prospect of a cat fight in a tree spurred my beloved to action. I held the ladder, and he finished fishing out the cat.

“Do you think he’ll like me now?” he asked.

Don’t know. I do know I have a lap cat, and that’s what I was hoping for. Sometimes “used” works out just fine.

(He’s still here.)

This post originally appeared on ourMidland.com, the online home of the Midland (MI) Daily News. Republished with permission.