Yellacat

Five years ago, a friendly orange-and-white kitty just showed up at Lisa's door and began to work his way into her heart. He was already neutered and appeared to be about one year old, so she thought he must surely belong to someone. He had no collar and was not microchipped, so Lisa began to search for his owner. He didn't belong to the neighbors, and no one responded to her posts about a found cat, so she and her daughters decided to keep him. During all this time, they all just referred to him as Yellacat or Mr. Cat among other names, and those are the names that stuck.

Today, at the age of six years, Yellacat is an essential and beloved member of the family, so when he could not be found recently, they all immediately began to search for him. Two nights passed without a sign of him, but on the third day, they finally found him 45 feet high at the tip top of a Tallow tree inside the wooded area behind the house. They had to get some loppers to clear a path through the briers to reach the tree, and they tried to encourage him to come down. Yellacat wanted down, but he just could not figure out how to do it. They worked with friends and neighbors to try other ideas, but they all failed. When Lisa called me, it was already after dark, so I planned to rescue Yellacat in the morning after his third night in the tree.


I was pleased to hear that Yellacat would likely be a friendly and cooperative cat to rescue, but I was not pleased to see the tree. There were numerous vines of various types running the entire length of the tree, and they made it impossible to install my rope up high anywhere near Yellacat. Instead, I would have to start low and slowly work my way up to him. However, I was extremely pleased to see that Lisa had already cleared a very large area of the briers, vines and undergrowth around the tree. Sometimes, I need to clear some area near the tree myself before I can work, and it's not a pleasant job, so Lisa saved me a lot of time and energy by doing that before I even arrived.


After a strenuous and annoying climb through the vines to reach Yellacat, I was happy to see him ready to greet me. In fact, he was getting impatient with my slow progress and came down to the next limb. From there, he tried stepping onto my shoulders while I was still working to get myself secured into position. I had to refuse his attempts to stand on my shoulders, but I'm sure that he would have voluntarily stepped onto my lap if I had been ready for that. He wanted down and was determined not to miss this opportunity.

Once I was better secured into position, we visited for a minute, and then I held the open carrier up to him. He looked inside but was not interested. I opened a can of food for him, and he perked up for that. I let him have a few bites while gradually moving the carrier closer to him. Now that he was focused on the food, I moved the food inside the carrier, shoved it all the way to the back and gave him a chance to go inside. He followed the food inside, but stretched his body and kept his back feet on the limb. I slowly pulled the carrier away from the limb to force him to pull his back legs inside, and, when he did so, I closed the door.


I brought him down and handed the carrier to Lisa. She and her daughter walked him home and released him inside, and Yellacat headed straight for the litter box. They had all been very stressed over the entire duration of this tense drama, so it was a huge relief to finally have their sweet boy safely down and at home. After their countless expressions of gratitude, I packed up and headed home. Shortly after, they sent this picture of him soaking up some of the loving he missed while in the tree.