High-climbing Kitty OK

Shaking a little yellow ball with a bell inside, Rick Fratis called for his missing cat.

"Chloe, Chloe. C'mon baby cat," he repeated, ringing the bell that usually brought his calico running home.

But this time, nothing.

He called his wife, Sheri, at work last Monday.

"She's gone," Sheri recalls her husband saying as he choked back tears. "Chloe's gone."

The Fratis family has always had cats. Sheri says they must always have four " one for each wheel on a bus. So it was no surprise that a year and a half ago, with the couple down to three cats, their son brought them a kitten he'd gotten from a box in front of a grocery store.

What was a surprise was Rick's reaction to the cat.

"I never had a connection with any animal like I did with this cat," he said. "Of all the cats and dogs we've had, I just took to this one. She's been my cat. She sleeps on my pillow."

So when Chloe went missing, "It tore me up," he said.

He made up fliers with Chloe's picture that said, "Please help find me," and posted them around his neighborhood.

Then he read the Nevada Appeal on Friday. He couldn't be sure, but it looked like a picture of Chloe stranded on top of a 50-foot power pole just yards from his apartment.

He rushed outside, but the pole was empty. He came back in and read an update on nevadaappeal.com that the cat was rescued by an NV Energy crew, but ran away as soon as she hit the ground.

"There were so many emotions," Rick said. "I lost her, then I thought I found her, but then she was gone again. I read that she had been rescued but that she ran away. Where was my cat?"

Rick got in his car and drove around the parking lot of the Sierra Springs apartment complex where he lives. He called her name. He shook the bell.

"I started getting real empty about the 10th time around," he said.

Around 10:45 p.m., he was driving, calling and ringing the bell when something darted across his path.

"It was a skinny little thing," he recalls. He got out of his car for a closer look.

"She was looking back at me, and I just started crying," he said.

Chloe turned and trotted down the sidewalk, stopping in front of the apartment door.

"Just like she always does."

For now, the Fratises are not letting Chloe out of the house, where she's dining on tuna and canned cat food.

"She's been treated like a princess since she's been home," he said. "Got to plump her up a bit."

It's still hard for the couple to process all the events that have transpired, leading to the new nickname, Chloe the pole cat.

"It's unbelievable that we stood out there and called and called and looked and looked," Sheri said. "We just never looked up."

- Contact reporter Teri Vance at tvance@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1272.