Cat Rescue Guy

Poor little Kit Kat, a one-year-old orange tabby boy, was stuck 35 feet high in a Pine tree on a rotting stub that was barely over one foot long. The stub was angled upward slightly, so placing his butt against the trunk of the tree and facing away was the only position available to him. He could stand, and he could squat to rest on his belly a bit, but that was all he could do. He was stuck there for two nights before I arrived to rescue him, and he is lucky that this dead stub held him during that time since it was prone to breaking off at any moment. It must have been miserable for him to be stuck there for so long with such limited movement. If Kit Kat had fallen, there were deadly hazards on the ground below in his neighbor's yard in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In addition to a fence close to the tree, the ground had been covered with tall bamboo shoots which had been cut leaving stiff, eight-inch long, sharp stubs pointing straight up ready to impale anything that fell from above...

It was a quick rescue if you don't count the two hours it took me to set up. Once I got up in the tree with Kitty, it took only one minute to get this one-year-old, Russian Blue down. Actually, Kitty did all the work by rescuing herself. She took one look at me so close to her and said, "I'm outta here!" Even though her escape path required that she go toward me and step on my hand and foot, she was determined to get away from me. As she passed by me, I put one hand on her back while she hissed and uttered something unprintable. She turned to go down the long, angled stem head-first, and the only way she could control her descent was to slide on her belly with her left legs on one side of the stem and her right legs on the other. The slide down must not have been pleasant with the rough bark of the tree rubbing against her belly, but she didn't seem to mind. That was a small price to pay for her safe escape and freedom. Once she reached the bottom of the stem, she...

Cats have terrible timing. They seem to have a natural talent for finding the worst time to get stuck in a tree, for example, shortly before you are leaving on a trip, or just as the weather is turning bad. So I was not surprised to get calls for two rescues just before the weather was forecast to be very cold and rainy. Sagwa was first. Sagwa is a feisty, two-year-old Siamese mix who got stuck about 25 feet high for two nights in a tree in Denham Springs. The weather was fine for her rescue that afternoon, but the weather was expected to turn bad during the night, so there was a sense of urgency to get her down. Sagwa is a temperamental girl, so I had to be careful with her to be sure I didn't offend her or scare her higher up this vine-riddled tree. She went out the limb away from me once I reached level with her, but, fortunately, Sagwa is a food hog, so all I had to do was open a can of food for her, and she came straight back to me. She was such a beast for food that we had so...

I don't have any close pictures of this kitten to show to you, but, if you see him, don't be fooled by his cute face. This little gray tabby kitten is Trouble with a capital T, and I do mean Trouble. I arrived to rescue this unknown kitten thinking it would be a quick and easy rescue, but this troublesome stinker outsmarted me at every turn and forced me to climb this tree four times over three days before I could rescue him. It was as if he knew exactly what I was planning and knew exactly how to thwart it. The saga started when Jonathan, a tennis instructor, called me about a kitten he found in a tree next to the tennis courts at a small neighborhood park. He had heard the kitten the day before but could not find it until now. Since he told me the kitten had been crying loudly, I just assumed it was tame. I asked if the kitten was looking at people down below or off into the distance when he was crying, but I don't remember getting a clear answer. That distinction is impo...

I could tell right away that Mia was going to be a sweet, easy kitty to rescue by the way she looked at me on the ground and begged for help. She clearly hated being stuck in that tree and was very anxious to get down. I was happy to have a cooperative kitty to rescue, but I was concerned about how I was going to reach her safely in this tree. Mia's age is estimated to be about six months, and she was stuck 35 feet high in a River Birch tree in Denham Springs, Louisiana. While I was on the ground trying to figure out a safe way to reach her, she came down five feet. That actually added more complication to my climbing plan, because I had planned to use the crotch where she was now standing and now I couldn't. This River Birch had three small stems each leaning slightly away from each other. If I installed my climbing rope at Mia's original perch and climbed straight up to her in the usual way, I was afraid that my weight could possibly cause the entire stem to fail at the b...

Farzana told me that her cat, Kohi, is a friendly boy -- and, normally, I believe he probably is -- but this was not a normal situation. Kohi, a one-year-old Russian Blue, was stuck about 20 feet high in a pencil of a tree that was about 40 feet tall and had only two significant limbs, both of which were at the top of the tree. As I installed my rope over one of those two limbs, the movement caused the thin tree to sway, and Kohi did not like that. In fact, I found that he got more and more frightened with every little sound and movement I made, so he was in no mood to be friendly to me when I climbed up to him. What's more, he felt trapped. He felt unable to go up or down, and the tiny limbs on which he rested were too small and too short to be of any use for an escape. I did my best to approach him calmly and peacefully, but Kohi was afraid, and he did not begin to relax a bit until he got the courage to turn around and sniff my hand. Once I petted him a couple times, he felt muc...

Whenever I am asked to rescue an unknown cat in a tree, one of the first things I want to know is if the cat talks to people below. Most tame cats will look at the people and talk to them begging for attention and help. A feral cat does not want to be seen or heard, so they will stay perfectly quiet. This unknown, bushy-tailed, brown tabby in Christian's Crepe Myrtle tree was quiet. When I arrived, the cat would look at me briefly, but it stayed perfectly quiet even when I climbed up to it. Up to this point, I could not determine if it was feral or just a scared, tame cat. As I got closer, it remained quiet but did not appear uncomfortable. A feral cat would begin looking for an escape route, but this one stayed still and in place. I reached my hand out toward the cat but got no response. I opened a can of food and noticed his ears react to the sound, but, when I reached the food out toward him, again, I got no response. I put the food on the end of a pole and was able to place the...