Cat Rescue Guy

I don't enjoy seeing anyone in distress, but I do like knowing that a cat owner cares enough to be distressed when her cat is stuck in a tree. That is a good sign that the cat is loved and given great care. Libby was distressed, and I could tell that her cat, Lucy, means more to her than just a pet. Lucy is a member of her family, and Libby would not rest until her baby is safely back down in her arms again. Lucy is a beautiful one-and-a-half-year-old kitty with long black and brown hair, and she is strictly an inside cat. Lucy escaped her house in Maurepas and went across the street and climbed a tall, skinny Cypress tree right at the edge of a swamp. She climbed 40 feet high and settled there on an uncomfortable limb. Libby did everything she could to coax Lucy down, but Lucy was stuck. Libby did not wait to find help, and by the time I was there the next morning, Lucy had been stuck in the tree only 12 hours. From the descriptions I was getting about Lucy as a skittish cat, I wa

When Kenya called me early in the afternoon about her cat stuck in a tree, I wanted to help right away, but the more I learned about the situation, the more I realized that we needed to wait. Her cat, Cloe, is an indoor-only cat that escaped that morning and ran into a neighbor's yard which was being diligently patrolled by a very large dog who was somewhat less than pleased to see her. Cloe escaped his rude welcome by climbing a tree by the fence line. The neighbors were not home, so there was no one to take the dog inside. With the cooperation of the neighbor on the other side of the fence, Kenya was able to get close to Cloe, who was only 12 feet high, but was unable to coax her down. Kenya described Cloe as a skittish cat, so the risk was higher that any rescue action could cause her to climb higher or fall out of the tree into the jaws of the dog waiting below. If Cloe had not been skittish, it may have been possible to prop a ramp up to her and let her walk down on her own on

It was right after I finished setting up for Pepe Lepew's rescue in Slidell that I got a call from Andre to see if I could rescue his cat in Picayune, Mississippi. Picayune is not very far from Slidell at all, so I considered it fortunate timing that I could do both of these rescues in the same trip. I told him I would call him as soon as I finished with Pepe to let him know when I could be there. At that time, I did not know that Pepe's rescue was going to turn into an exhausting, five-hour drama, so, after it was over, I felt very badly that I had to tell Andre that I was simply too exhausted to do another rescue. It would have to wait till the next day, and I would just have to make a separate trip. Andre and his wife, Shannon, were very anxious to get their cat down, but they understood, and we agreed to meet the following morning. The cat, Midnight, had been stuck in a tree in their backyard for three nights by the time I arrived the next morning. Midnight is a black, one

I would like to think that a very difficult rescue, as I had with Gloria , would be automatically followed by a grace period during which another difficult rescue would be somehow forbidden. Unfortunately, I learned to my great disappointment that there is no such law, and the random nature of difficult rescues struck me again just five days later. This time, it occurred with the rescue of Pepe Lepew, the gray and white boy kitty belonging to Barbara in Slidell. It's unclear just how long Pepe had been stuck in this Pine tree in his back yard, but we know it was at least two nights. When I arrived, I found him about 55 feet high and was disappointed to see several vines climbing the entire height of the tree. Normally, I would like to install my rope well above him, but I had no good choices in this particular tree and had to settle for a limb below him. After climbing to the top of my rope, I used another rope to work my way higher up to him. I was happy to see him staying in his

It was when I was taking a break in the middle of the marathon rescue of Gloria that I got a call from Nicole in Mobile, Alabama asking for help with her cat, Josie, who was stuck in a tree. I gave her all my advice and suggestions and hoped she would find a way to work it out, since there was certainly no way I could get there that day when I was already exhausted and still had not finished rescuing Gloria. Nicole took all my advice and do-it-yourself suggestions to heart and did her best, but she succeeded only in scaring the cat higher in the tree. It was time for me to see what I could do. I found Josie up as high as she could go in that tree. I saw the evidence of Nicole's rescue attempts with the ladder leaning against the tree from the roof and a bucket she had managed to haul up in the tree hoping she could use that to lower Josie to the ground. Josie sat quietly and motionless in her tiny fork, and, after asking about Josie's attitude toward strangers, I was a little

This gray kitty belonged to someone but did not yet have a name, so I will just call him Grayson. He had been stuck in a tree in his yard in Prairieville for two nights, and the tree he was in had two stems, one straight and strong, the other curved and unstable. Grayson chose the unstable one. He was too scared of me to let me get close, and all my efforts to reassure him failed, so he backed out to the end of the limb as far as he could. I decided to use the rescue pole to see if I could reach it behind him to nudge him toward me, but as soon as he saw the pole beginning to come in his direction, he backed farther away from me, lost his footing and fell to the ground. He immediately ran to the next door neighbor's house and hid under it. He appeared to be fine, but I felt badly that I could not bring him down safely. The next rescue was for Gloria, a semi-feral black cat at Big Sky Ranch near Folsom. She was not a sociable kitty, but she allowed Catherine, and only Catherine, to