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 was still too high to jump to the ground, so she pondered her options. She settled on jumping to the roof of the next-door neighbor's storage building, and, from there, she jumped to the ground. To get back home, she went to the back part of the yard, climbed the fence and jumped down to her own back yard. She hid under the storage building there until I was long gone and it felt safe to emerge. She is safely back home now and happy as a clam. So is her family. They all suffered more than Kitty did even though Kitty was the one stuck in a tree for one long, cold night.
