Cat Rescue Guy

Sam and Starla live with four cats in a very rural area near Brookhaven, Mississippi.  One of these cats is a mostly-black female which they adopted from a neighbor and named Bella.  Bella has some small white patches on her chest and belly and is just over two years old.  We don't know what happened, but for whatever reason, Bella climbed a pine tree down the road and got stuck, and it took a day for Sam to find her.  Sam called a local animal welfare organization that happened to have a flyer on their bulletin board for the only cat-in-tree rescuer in the whole state of Mississippi, Bob Reese.  Sam called Bob, but Bob was a three-hour drive away, and by the time he got there, it would be getting dark.  Bob is a good friend of mine, so he called me to see if I would be interested in handling this case, especially since it would be only a two-hour drive for me.  I accepted, quickly packed up and rushed out the door. When I arrived, I met Sam, and h...

Calicat, as you will likely guess, is a calico kitty, and she lives far away out in the country with three other cats, one of which is her real brother, and two people, Toni and Wayne.  They are so far out in the country that they have had a problem with people dropping off unwanted pets nearby.  Recently, two cats were discarded on the road during the night, and they are probably the reason that Calicat was chased up a tree in her yard. This is not the first time that Calicat has been stuck in a tree.  In fact, she holds the record among all the cats I have rescued by being stuck in a tree five times.  I never knew about her for the first four times, and each of those times she either fell out or managed to find a way down on her own.  The fourth time, she was stuck in the tree for a hard-to-believe three weeks before she fell out.  The only reason she survived that length of time in the tree was that there were rain showers every other day, and she wa...

Five or six years ago, a somewhat feral, calico cat just showed up at Fred's house.  Fred and his wife are a retired couple, and they developed a friendship with this cat over a long period of time.  They cared for her, fed her, and eventually tamed her so well that they could pet her.  They adopted her as one of their own and began keeping her inside at night.  They named her Patches.  Eventually they noticed that Patches was deaf.  It appeared that she would respond to some very loud sounds, but it was not clear if she actually heard them or felt them. When Patches did not make her usual appearance one day, they began to look for her.  They could hear her, but it took some time to actually locate her.  They found her 30 feet high in a tree near their driveway.  They tried to coax her down, but nothing they tried worked.  Patches was stuck.  The next morning, they called Animal Control who referred them to me. When I arrived,...

This is the third time that Trixie has gotten stuck in the same tree, but it is the first time that I have been called to rescue her.  The first time, a local tree service went out with a bucket truck to get her, but she got scared and climbed down on her own.  The second time, they went out again with the bucket truck, and Trixie walked along the branch over there to greet them in the bucket.  Now, it's my turn, and with that kind of history, I'm not sure what to expect. Susan told me that Trixie is normally very friendly and social with strangers, and she proved it on her second rescue.  I am not surprised when even a friendly cat gets scared by the size and noise of a bucket truck coming up to them in a tree, so I was hoping that Trixie would respond much better to my slow, quiet approach. Trixie is a five year old brown tabby girl, and she has been forced to live in the garage and outdoors due to Susan's allergies.  Susan is trying to find a new indoor h...

Tigger is a sweet, 10-month old black cat who lives with three dogs.  He is comfortable around dogs, but when the big Doberman across the street started chasing him, Tigger was not taking any chances.  He quickly scampered up the nearest tree to safety.  He avoided the dog but found himself stuck 20 feet high in the tree. His mama, Frances, bravely used a ladder to try to reach him and came so very close.  If she stood on the next-to-highest rung, she could just reach him well enough to touch him, but not well enough to pick him up or pull him down.  After Tigger had spent two nights in the tree, Frances finally found me.  She told me about the vultures flying by overhead, and I did not want to let Tigger stay up there any longer. The tree was positioned between a fence and a large ditch and another smaller tree was growing immediately next to it.  Tigger was set at the top of the trunk where it split into stems that each went off in different dire...

Very often when I tell people that I rescue cats in trees, they will respond, "Isn't that dangerous?"  The answer is that, yes, it is dangerous:  the drive over there is dangerous, and the drive home is dangerous, but the part in between is fine.  That was especially true this time, but there was also one other danger with Pepper's second rescue:  lightning. When Susan called me to rescue Pepper, I almost told her that it would have to wait till the next day.  I had been watching a storm front approaching on the weather radar all day, and it was now getting very close.  I did not think I would have enough time to get packed and drive out there in rush-hour traffic before the storm arrived.  But I said I would proceed as if I did and re-assess as I go.  As it turned out, when I arrived at the site, the weather was calm with little hint of the storm that was approaching. I found Pepper about 25 feet high in the same tree where I rescued her be...