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He seemed utterly unconcerned about the crowd looking up at him and while people pulled out more and more phones to snap photos, Priest draped himself over the branch, rested his chin on his paws, and gazed lazily out at the crowd, as if he were people watching and had simply wanted the best vantage point.
The local news team, which always shot footage at the event for cheery human-interest stories, pointed their camera at the lavishly decorated tree. Cassidy could almost imagine what news anchor Tamara Michaelson would be saying. Well, Gary, here’s a question for you: who has two ears, four paws, and a ton of holiday spirit? The Christmas Cat, who has chosen the Craftmas tree as a home for the holidays.
He snorted. Then he resigned himself to being the center of attention as he strode through the crowd toward the tree. He felt certain, somehow, that River would not wish to be the one to collect Priest in front of all these people.
There was a wide berth around the bottom of the tree—probably because the sight lines for a video weren’t as good—and Cassidy met Jason, one of the tech people, at the base.
"Welp," Jason said.
"Yeah," Cassidy agreed. "Got a ladder?"
They did. In fact, the very tools that had been required to decorate the massive Fir were the tools that would help them get Priest. Between the two of them, they got a ladder set up beside the tree. By the time it was done, River ran over, cheeks flushed with cold and eyes watery.
"You found him?" they said, looking up at Cassidy, and he had such a strong urge to pull River to his chest, brush their hair back and reassure them, that he curled his hands into fists and shoved them in his pocket.
"Yeah. Guess he’s not afraid of heights, huh?"
River shook their head, looking utterly undone.
"Don’t worry," Cassidy said. "I’ll get him."
It might as well have been the solemn pledge of a knight of the round table for all the determination with which Cassidy climbed the ladder. He would rescue the kitten, deliver it back into River’s arms, and maybe earn a look or word of praise.
So preoccupied with this chivalric vision was Cassidy that he made it halfway up the ladder before it registered that he was climbing … and that he was terrified of heights.
The vertigo hit Cassidy like a tidal wave. One second his brain hadn’t caught up with his body’s northward trek; the next, a rush of dizziness sent his head spinning and his stomach lurched into his throat. He closed his eyes against the disorientation, clinging so tightly to the ladder that the wood beneath his hands creaked in duress.
You are fine, Cassidy told himself in the most soothing tone his inner monologue could manage while halfway up a very tall ladder, in front of thousands of people, in an attempt to rescue a kitten, when he was already in a bad way from the effects of the fluorescent lights. You are not going to faint or vomit or die. You are gonna move up to the next rung of the ladder one foot at a time and everything is going to be okay.
Breathing shallowly through his nose, Cassidy opened his eyes and looked only up at Priest and moved slowly, rung by run, to the top of the tree.
He took a deep breath when Priest came into reach, and instantly regretted his failure to bring up something like a canvas bag or a blanket to wrap Priest in for the trip down the ladder. Reaching out a slow hand to the kitten, not wishing to scare it, Cassidy got within a few inches of Priest’s head when Priest disappeared into the tree.
The crowd gasped and Cassidy became aware that all their cameras, which had previously been pointed at Priest, were now aimed at him.
An unfortunate side effect of this awareness was that now that he’d looked down, Cassidy’s vertigo was replaced with panic.
"Just don’t puke," he murmured. "Please, please do not puke on the tree, or on the cat, or on all these people."
"Are you okay?" some well-intentioned guy dressed as one of Santa’s elves called.
Unable to yell for fear of vomiting, Cassidy gave him a thumbs up sign and refocused on the task at hand.
"Priest. Come here, sweetie," Cassidy cooed.
He could just make out a soft meow over the din of the crowd. Clanging Christmas music still blasted from the loudspeakers and he could pick out individual voices from the crowd, which seemed to drill into his temples.
The excruciatingly heightened senses were another effect of the fluorescent lights. Soon, Cassidy knew, his nausea would become dry heaves, so he needed to get Priest and get the hell down this ladder before it began.
He called the cat’s name, made kissy sounds and Pspsps sounds, but all to no avail. When he stuck an arm into the tree, hoping maybe he’d randomly hit fur, he knew he was getting desperate.
