Zeek

When Andy opened his back door to let his cat, Zeek, inside, he was surprised to see that Zeek was not there. Andy looked for him but did not see him around. He called for him and then heard Zeek responding to him, but Andy could not see him or exactly locate him. It took a minute before he found Zeek about 25 feet high on the lowest limb of a large tree in his backyard. Andy tried to get Zeek to come down, but Zeek didn't know how. Andy was getting worried about him and tried everything he could to help Zeek come down, but nothing worked. He borrowed a tall ladder from his workplace and leaned that up against the tree, and it was just tall enough to reach Zeek's limb, but Zeek got spooked by the ladder and went up higher to the next limb. Now, Zeek was 30 feet high and out of reach, and Andy was out of ideas. Fortunately, someone alerted Andy to me, and he called me right away. By this time, Zeek had been in the tree for two and half days.

Zeek is a cute orange and white tabby, and he is almost one year old. He was perched on a large and long limb, so if he got scared of me, he had plenty of room to get away. Andy told me that Zeek is a reasonably friendly boy, so I was not expecting him to be big problem. While I installed my rope, Zeek stayed in place even though some of the activity worried him, but at the final step of installation, he had enough and walked about 12 feet out on his limb. I was glad he went out instead of up where there was plenty of room in this tall tree for him to run, and I figured I could get him to come back to me in time.

I climbed up to him, and he watched me and spoke every now and then. He didn't seem alarmed. The first thing I had to do was to clear several dead limbs that had fallen and collected at the base of the limb. With those out of the way, I had room to get on his limb. I called for him, but he mostly just ignored me, and I had trouble getting his attention, much less interest. I opened a can of food, but he didn't respond to that either. I put the food on a long, extendable pole and reached it out closer to him. Now, I was getting his attention, and he was getting interested. He gave the food a sniff and decided it was worth tasting. Now I had him hooked, so I started moving the food closer and closer to me while he followed. Very soon, he came up to me and was unconcerned about me. I let him eat some more food, and he let me pet him. He was perfectly relaxed, and I thought I had this cat in the bag.

Except, I didn't have the bag on my arm. Before I could do anything, Zeek turned around and walked back out the limb. While he was away, I prepared the bag on my arm and then began to call him back. And he did come back. He readily walked back up to me for some more food, and I petted him some more. I decided to try to use the food to lure him into the carrier, but once he saw the carrier up close, he turned around and walked right back out the limb. That makes two times I missed my chance.

Again, I lured him back to me, and again he readily walked up to me for some more food. I petted him and gave him a minute to eat, and then I pulled up the scruff of his neck, lifted him a bit and pulled the bag over him. He was not happy about that, and he fussed at me all the way down to the ground.

I handed him to Andy, and he took Zeek inside to release him. After Zeek realized he was at home again, he went back and forth from the food bowl to the water bowl until he had his fill. After a few minutes, he came back outside where I had just finished packing my gear, and he allowed me to take this picture of him. He was fine and happy to get back to his important business, and Andy was relieved to have his buddy down and safe again.