Last night, Amanda and I accidentally drank WAY too much wine.
As a result, we spent much of the evening dancing around the tree on our patio and admiring the paper lanterns we had hung up. We were elated to have created our own summer Christmas tree. Fabrizio was out celebrating with us and watched our stupor from the driveway.
Amanda and I fell to the ground to enjoy the motionless stars that were spinning in our vision when we heard a blaze of something speed past the hedge behind us.
It all happened so fast, but suddenly our cat was halfway up a telephone pole with a German Shepard barking at it from below. The dog had come out of nowhere and made a good 100-foot sprint at Fabrizio, who made like a squirrel and was now completely vertical - 20 feet up - and clinging for life to the telephone pole.
Fearless, Amanda launched at the dog and chased him away. I'm sure her mouth was foaming Merlot-red, though it was too dark out to tell. She called me over to assure the dog was gone and see how high the cat had climbed. After a few minutes, she coaxed Fabrizio to come down, which he did with an impressive, crisscross maneuver. I was relieved we didn't have to pull out the ladder to bring him down. We took Fabrizio inside to chill out with Sergio, who is always chill.
Unaware of our own volume, we created quite a ruckus outside over the event at 10:30 p.m., and our neighbor across the street came over to check on us. By this time, we had resumed drinking and recalled the story to him in one big mumble. I'm sure he thought we needed saving just as much as the cat.