Cat Rescue Guy

This is supposed to be the slow season in this area for cats in trees, but the cats don't seem to know that. I have done four rescues in three days, and I also had calls for two other rescues that resolved on their own. I don't know why the cats have been so busy lately, but I know that I don't want to leave them in the tree very long during this July heatwave. While I certainly do enjoy the end result of rescuing these cats in this heat, I must confess that I do not enjoy the process of getting them there. I'm not much to look at even when I'm all cleaned up, but after all the sweating I do in one of these rescues in this heat, I look like I have been standing in a  heavy rain storm and rolling in mud puddles. It's not a pretty picture, and the stink is even worse, but it is all worth it to bring an end to the suffering of these cats and their owners. The first rescue was for Cleo, a sweet nine-month-old tabby boy who was stuck in a tree next to his house in Sp...

After a long, exhausting rescue the day before, I was hoping for a quiet day to recover and rest, so I was very disappointed when my phone rang before 9:00 AM with news of another kitty in need. April called me desperately seeking help for her cat, Gracie, and it sounded like a very bad situation. The tree is in a wild, wooded area and next to a deep ravine, and Gracie has been stuck there for six, hot July days. To make matters worse, Gracie is pregnant. It was a long drive to this poor, rural location, and shortly before I got there, I got a text message from April saying that she could not see or hear Gracie anymore. I called her right away to discuss this further, but April was crying and could barely speak.  She assumed that Gracie had fallen and died, but I tried to reassure her that it is more likely that Gracie just moved to a different part of the tree as cats often do. I told her to continue searching for Gracie and let me know when she finds her. I would be there shortly...

I was getting conflicting information from the family about Charlie's disposition, but as long as at least one person says that Charlie is friendly and likes to sit on your lap, then I figure I have a good chance at befriending this four-year-old, orange tabby boy. Charlie was stuck in a tall Pine tree in his backyard in Gonzales, Louisiana for four hot, July days, and his family had been frantically trying to find a way to get him down. When I arrived, Charlie was about 35 feet high in the tree, and I was expecting a routine rescue. It is almost standard practice for me to set a rope very high in the tree even if the cat is very low, and there are three reasons for that: (1) Installing my rope in the tree causes some noise and disturbance in the tree which usually frightens most cats, so the farther away the cat is from that disturbance, the less frightened he will be. (2) If the cat stays low but goes far out on a limb to get away from me, then having my rope set high makes it ea...

Cats can get stuck in trees, of course, but they can also get stuck on a roof, especially if they climbed a tree to get there. They simply walk out a limb overhanging the roof and jump down to the roof.  If the tree is the cat's only means of getting down, and if the cat doesn't know how to climb down a tree, then he is stuck on the roof. Even if the cat knows how to climb down a tree, he may still be stuck on the roof if the limb he used to reach the roof rises out of his reach when his weight is no longer on it, and it is an annoyingly persistent fact of gravity that we can always jump down farther than we can jump up. During this oppressively hot week, I got two calls on consecutive days for two different kitties on two different hot roofs, both of which were two-story apartment buildings, and I have to be honest: I don't like doing roof rescues, especially on two-story apartment buildings. The only way I can get on the roof is to climb a tree, and, sometimes, the tree t...

The pace of summer rescues has slowed down quite a bit, but it hasn't stopped. I know at least three kitties who managed to get stuck in a tree recently, and the first one was Neo, a sweet, sociable, ten-month-old girl kitty in Denham Springs, Louisiana. She was stuck for one night at the top of a small tree immediately next to a large Pine tree. I climbed the large Pine tree and pulled myself over to her, and she had no reservations about me at all. We introduced ourselves to each other, and then I lifted her out of her perch and placed her on my lap. I had already spread the bottom of the cat bag over my lap, so all I did was give her some reassuring pets and then pull the sides of the bag up around her. After a short ride back down to the ground, she was safe and happy back inside. After that was Prince, a sweet, eight-year-old kitty in rural Zachary, Louisiana who I had rescued once before eight months ago in the same tree. Similar to Neo's situation, Prince was in a small ...