Cat Rescue Guy

I don't know if it is the brutal heat that has caused the slump in the rescue business this summer, but I have not had a rescue to do in three weeks.  Maybe it's too hot for the cats to want to climb or for the dogs to chase them, but, whatever the reason, just when the weather strangely got a little cooler and drier, I got a call.  Rita called me to say that her indoor cat got stuck in a tree in her yard, and she has been unable to get him down.  I told her I would be there first thing in the morning. The next morning I went over there and found Rita's cat, Kane, about 25 feet high in a tallow tree at the fence line.  (It seems like it's always a tallow tree and/or always on the fence line.) He was now actually a little higher than he had been just a few minutes earlier, and as I prepared to figure out how to climb up to him, he continued to climb a little higher still.  Every time he moved, he messed up my plans for installing my rope.  Fortunately, he eventually

I was in the middle of an extremely long and exhausting rescue of Fulvia when I got a call from Sabrina.  Her one-year old cat, Prince, had been stuck in a tree for four days, and she and her family were desperate to get him down.  I could hear the frustration and distress of the past four days in her voice, and it was not until she called Animal Control that she learned about me and felt hopeful for the first time.  I told her I would be happy to rescue her kitty, but I could not specify an exact time since I was still in the middle of a rescue.  I said I would call her back when I finished, but added that I would need an hour or two to recover before I would be in strong enough condition to rescue her kitty.  As it turned out, I needed another two hours to complete Fulvia's rescue, but after a quick lunch, I called her back and promised to be there in 30 minutes. When I arrived at the site, I met Sabrina, her husband, Yaman, and their children.  The cat, Prince, was in a tre

Some rescues are quick, and some are not.  This one was not.  I was expecting it to be quick.  After all, I rescued Fulvia twice before, though in a very different way, and they were the quickest of all my rescues.  Fulvia got stuck on the neighbor's roof the first two times, and it took only a few minutes to prop a ramp up to the roof and let her walk down on her own.  I remember putting the ramp in place and watching her happily walk down toward me, though I also remember that I needed to back away a few feet from the ramp before she would go all the way down.  This time, however, she is in a tree, but I still thought I could easily make friends with her. I was wrong. Fulvia is a one-year old gray tabby girl that belongs to Bobbie, and this is the third time she has been chased by a neighborhood dog that sometimes runs loose.  The first two times, she ended up on the neighbor's roof.  This time, however, she was up a tree in another neighbor's backyard.  When I firs

Bill lives in a small, two-story apartment complex, and when his gray tabby, JuJu, went missing one day, he eventually found her up on the roof of the U-shaped building.  He tried to think of ways to get her down and people to call, but every effort resulted in failure.  Then he called the Fire Department, and they referred him to me. When I arrived at the site, I saw a very large, tall pine tree at the corner of the building.  The tree had a large branch that reached toward the building, and from that branch, a smaller limb extended from it directly over the roof.  The limb hovered just above the roof by a few inches and would have made an easy access path for any cat. I installed my climbing rope in the tree, climbed up and used those same branches to walk over to the roof of the building.  To my surprise, I could not see any sign of JuJu.  There was no place to hide.  If she were on the roof, I would be able to see her.  Since she isn't there, I could only assume that s

Minnie is a mystery cat.  She doesn't belong to anyone as far as we know, but we think we know who feeds her.  We're not sure how long she was stuck in the tree, but we know it was at least three days.  We don't know how old she is or even is she is a male or female.  We don't know her name, so, for the sake of her rescue, I am calling her Minnie.  What we do know is that she is lucky that Louis heard her crying and cared enough to do something about it.  Louis lives two houses down from the backyard where Minnie's tree was located, and he is the one who made the phone calls that eventually led to me.  It was not his cat, but he could not bear to hear it suffering like that, and he wanted to help it. Minnie was in a tree that was just barely inside the fence of a yard and home that has been vacant and neglected for quite some time.  Even though the front yard was small, the house was barely visible through all the tall weeds that had grown there.  The tall weeds

It was late in the evening when my phone rang, and I listened as a man named Randy told me the story about his cat.  His cat was named Daisy Belle, and she had been stuck in a Live Oak tree for 11 days after being chased by some dogs.  He lived out in the country near Rayne, and, from the beginning, he had been trying to find someone to help him get her down, but no one would help.  It wasn't until a few minutes ago when he talked with a relative who is a veterinarian in Baton Rouge that he learned about me.  As he talked, I could hear how much he and his wife cared about their cat and how worried and distraught they were.  This was important.  I told him I would be there first thing in the morning.  Now I could hear how his voice was much more relaxed as relief finally fell over him with the knowledge that a rescue was now in sight.  After spending 11 days trying to find someone to help, he finally found it. I drove out to the site of his rural home the next morning and Randy