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Showing posts from March, 2022

Louie

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Louie is a sweet boy, but he is very wary of strangers, so it wasn't a surprise to see this nine-month-old Siamese mix go all the way out to the end of the limb to get away from me. Louie had been stuck in this tree in his next door neighbor's backyard for two nights in Livingston, and he was now about 40 feet high. Fortunately, his limb was not a very long one, but he was still beyond my reach, and the limb was not structurally sound enough to allow me to put any weight on it. I struggled to make friends with Louie from afar, but he was unimpressed and would not come closer to me. I finagled ways to safely move out closer to him without stressing his limb, and I could see him finally softening his stance with me. He stepped closer to me to sniff my outstretched hand, but then stepped back to his original spot. I regarded that as progress, and worked to stretch out even closer to him. I needed to be close enough to touch him if I was ever going to convince him that I was friend

Trixie

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Trixie jumped the big ditch and went into the woods behind her house in Denham Springs, and, as a result of this violation of house rules, ended up stuck in a tree. Hopefully, this one-year-old girl learned a valuable lesson after spending one night in that tree, but I wouldn't bet on it. Fortunately, Trixie was easy enough to rescue if you discount the troubles of getting to the tree and climbing it using a slower and more tedious method. She had reservations about me a few times but always let me talk her into coming back to me and trusting me again. She was very friendly overall and let me bag her with ease, and she was soon back at home relaxing with her feline brother who had missed her.

Gumball

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This unknown brown tabby was stuck in a tree for thirteen days. He showed up in a Sweet Gum tree in Bruce's backyard  in a very remote area near Bush, Louisiana, and Bruce worked hard to find a way to get him down. When all his efforts to help the kitty failed, he worked hard to feed it in the tree. Bruce stood at the top of a tall ladder and used a very long pole to hold some food up to the cat. Bruce could barely reach the cat, and he could hold the food in place only a few moments before tiring, but he managed to feed the cat enough to buy some more time to find a solution. Generally, tame cats will cry and talk to people below while feral cats remain quiet, so when Bruce told me that this cat had not made a single sound in thirteen days, I figured this must surely be a feral cat. But that is not always the case. I once had a perfectly quiet kitty turn into a sweetheart once I climbed up to it, so I won't truly know about this case until I see more behavior. Once I started c

Coal

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Coal was such a cute kitty. She was friendly and happy to see me, but she didn't quite understand that I was there to rescue her instead of just visit and play with her. This seven-month-old kitten seemed more interested in playing with me and the vines than getting down out of the tree. She swatted at this vine and bit another one while leaving me there to wait for her to finish. This surprised me since I had just heard her crying desperately for help when I first arrived. She had been in the tree only one night, but it felt like forever to her as she perched there during the long, lonely night looking over the bayou running beside the tree by her home in Simmesport. Fortunately, I was able, at last, to get her attention with some food, and I used that to lure her onto my lap where I had already prepared the cat bag. Once she was on my lap, I pulled the bag up around her and brought her down to her very-relieved family.

Tuxie

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Tuxie looked cool and relaxed on the outside, but he was nervous and uncomfortable on the inside when he saw me climb up close to him. This one-year-old boy was chased by the neighbor's dog up a tree behind his back yard in Denham Springs, and he had been stuck there for one night. While he is normally a very friendly fellow, up here in this tree with this ugly stranger coming up to him was a different matter. Tuxie looked like he didn't want to appear rude, but he didn't want to be pals either. He just politely tolerated my friendly overtures and had no intention of reciprocating. My sweet talk, my gentle pats, my patience, and even my offer of free food were all ignored, but he stayed in place while privately hoping I would just go away. Getting him into a carrier or on my lap was not going to happen, so I donned the cat bag, petted him gently one more time, and then I pulled him by the scruff into the bag as gently as I could. He took it well and was quickly back down on

Oscar's Second Rescue

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This routine rescue of an unknown kitty stuck in a tree for at least two nights took a surprising turn at the end. It began when Steve went out to his mailbox next to the highway and heard a faint meow. He followed the sound while walking back up his long driveway and eventually found the source. One hundred yards from the highway, he found a cat stuck in an Oak tree. Steve has cats of his own, but this was not his cat. He tried to coax it down, but the cat just cried pitifully to him. When Steve called me, it was late in the afternoon, but I still would have had time to rescue the cat, except no one was home at that time to show me where the cat is and to care for the cat once I brought it down. I always like to have someone there to monitor the rescue anyway in case something goes wrong. The next day, I had a family funeral to attend, and I didn't think I would be back home in time for a rescue. However, I managed to get home earlier than expected, so I contacted Steve and headed

Juniper

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Juniper is a sweet, six-month-old kitty who is allowed supervised outings in her backyard in Lafayette, and in her most recent backyard outing, she saw a squirrel and chased it up a big Live Oak tree. That was when Juniper learned that squirrels are expert tree climbers and that she is not. She had been stuck there forty feet high for one night when I arrived to rescue her. When I asked Jayme how Juniper normally reacts to strangers, she said that Juniper usually goes up to them and greets them, and then she hisses at them. That was my experience too. She's a sweet and friendly girl, and she readily made friends with me in the tree and let me pet her, but when she voluntarily stepped inside the carrier to come down, she hissed at me as I closed the door. No matter. The main thing is she is down and safe, and Jayme's daughter and son are especially glad about that.

Tamara

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I am very thankful that Autumn not only happened to notice this unknown cat stuck in a large, dead tree at the edge of a vacant patch of land in Picayune, Mississippi, but also cared enough to go to the trouble of finding help for it. I could tell from the ground that the black and white cat was sweet by the way she cried to me while rubbing her face on the tree, and, indeed, we made friends very quickly in the tree. She refused to go into the carrier, but happily jumped on my lap for some food, so I had the cat bag already prepared on my lap, pulled it up around her, and took her down. Before I transferred the cat to Autumn's carrier, I checked her for a microchip and was surprised to find one. The microchip company, however, was one without a call center to connect me quickly to the pet owner, so Autumn took the cat to a veterinarian to begin the slower process of reunification so that I could return home. Later, Autumn told me that the vet's office found that the chip was un