I arrived there before Lauren and began calling and looking for Kiki. I really needed Kiki to respond to me so I could at least narrow down the search area in this large expanse of woods, but Kiki remained perfectly silent. The mosquitoes in the woods were swarming me, so I went back out to get some repellent and a hat. I went back into the woods looking and calling for Kiki, but, again, had no luck. Fortunately, Lauren arrived at that time, so I was hoping Kiki would respond to her voice. She called for him, but she, too, got no response. At this point, I was beginning to wonder if he had not already come down and gone home, but I went back into the woods to look for him. You have to be very lucky to find a cat in a tree in the woods using eyesight alone, but I had to give it a good try. So, I stepped back into the woods and walked around searching each tree. In less than a minute, I got lucky.
I went back to the truck to get all the gear I would need and returned to install my rope. The mosquitoes made every second in the woods very miserable. While I have been in swarms of mosquitoes that were much worse than this, this one still ranks in my top-ten. I installed my rope as quickly as I could and began to climb up to Kiki while hoping the mosquitoes would not follow me up there. They did.
At his first rescue, Kiki was friendly and cooperative, and I was certainly hoping for the same result today. After all, I wanted to keep my visit with the mosquitoes as short as possible. Kiki, however, showed no sense of urgency or even desire to end his time in the tree. I think he was afraid of me this time and was content to keep a safe distance between us. The limb he was on was not very long, but it was small enough that it could not support my weight well enough for me to go out very far. I supported some of my weight with an additional rope tied to a limb above us, but that limb was also small and inadequate. With my feet pushing against the trunk of the tree, I stretched out horizontally along Kiki's limb to reach as close to him as possible, but I was still four feet away from him. I really needed for him to come to me, and, so far, he was not interested in doing that.
I opened a can of food and placed it at the end of an extendable pole and used the pole to place the food in front of him. He had only mild and fleeting interest in the food, but at least it got him to move around a little bit. I stretched out as far as I possibly could to see if I could get him to sniff my hand, but he would not come close enough to do that. I did not prepare my rescue pole or long-handle net, because I expected Kiki to be friendly and easy. I did not want to climb back down, retrieve that gear and climb back up. I thought Kiki would eventually warm up to me in time, so I stayed there working to coax him to me.
I did not expect that 35 minutes would pass before he would finally come to me, but that is exactly how long it took from the time I first stepped on his limb. He teased me with three approaches to sniff my hand and even let me pet him, but he went back out the limb again each time and waited. It was on his fourth approach that he came all the way to me and let me pet him more fully. I apologized for betraying his trust, but I bagged him right away, because I did not want to spend any more time up there with the mosquitoes.

But, I have to admit, I hope the phone does not ring again anytime real soon.