Cat Rescue Guy

Sometimes, it takes a village to rescue a cat, or, in this case, three neighbors in three consecutive houses in a pleasant neighborhood in Hammond. In this mini-village, there were Patricia, the cat owner, Dana, the property owner, and Charmin, the next-door neighbor of action who made the rescue happen. Prudence, the two-year-old calico, got stuck 30 feet high in a tree in Dana's backyard, and Patricia went over there frequently trying to coax her down but was not having any luck. The fire department could not help, and Patricia didn't know what else to do. It was Charmin, the third neighbor, who noticed the problem and found me. She gave my contact information to Dana, and Dana contacted me to see if I could help. Prudence had been stuck in the tree for four nights, so I went out there right away. Prudence is normally a very friendly girl, but the commotion I made in the tree while installing my rope frightened her, and she walked out on another limb to get away from it. When

Chris was working in a gated, townhome community in Baton Rouge when he noticed three kittens up in a tree. His co-worker managed to get one of the kittens down, but the other two were too high to reach. Chris called me late in the day to see if I could help, and I went out there the next morning. When I arrived, I found one solid-black kitten still crying loudly in the tree and the solid-black mama cat on the ground below, but there was no sign of the second kitten. The tree was a small, dense Cypress with very little room for me to fit between the limbs, but, as I squeezed through the limbs up toward the kitten, he watched me carefully. Just as I got close to him, he became nervous and climbed a little higher. I chased him to a point near the top where he seemed to give up and let me touch him. He wasn't comfortable with me, but he wasn't terrified either. I scooped him up and gently slipped him inside the cat bag and brought him down. His mama was there waiting for me, and s

When I hear that a cat runs to the back of the house and hides when new people arrive, I am not expecting that cat to be happy to see me approaching him in a tree, but cats surprise me sometimes, and Ash, the six-year-old black kitty who runs and hides from visitors to his home in Mandeville, surprised me in a most welcome and pleasant way by being quite happy to see me in the tree with him. Ash had been stuck in a neighbor's tree overnight, and he found the experience to be most unpleasant. Perhaps that is what made him more receptive to me, but I didn't need an explanation. I was just happy that he made his rescue so much easier for me. That scaredy-cat actually got in my lap, so all I had to do was spread the bottom of the cat bag over my lap first, let him step on my lap, and then pull the bag up around him. A few minutes later, he was back home and quite happy to be there. After I packed my gear and went to his home to retrieve my cat bag, with big eyes, Ash saw me coming

Robin does not know why her one-year-old kitty, Lee-low, climbed the big Cypress tree just behind her back yard, but it was very clear that Lee-low did not know how to come back down. Robin tried to coax Lee-low down, and Lee-low desperately struggled to do it, but the only thing she could do successfully was climb higher. By the time of her second night in the tree, she had climbed all the way to the top, but by the time I arrived to rescue her that morning, she had managed to come back down about ten feet. While I was installing my rope in the tree, she actually climbed down about halfway, and she did it the right way by going down backward. In time, I think she may have climbed all the way down by herself, but I could not guarantee that, and I didn't know how long that might take. She was stalled on a limb about 30 feet high, and my rope was installed, so up I went to get her. Lee-low is not the most sociable of kitties, but there was still hope that I, a stranger, could still m

Those of you who like to give your inside cat a supervised outing may want to learn from Brandy's experience when she did that with her four-month-old kitty, Lil Bit. "Supervised" doesn't mean "controlled." It just means you can only watch helplessly as your cat runs off or does something you don't want. In Brandy's case, she watched as the energetic Lil Bit got a bad case of the zoomies and ran up a tree. Lil Bit climbed 35 feet up that Pecan tree and was stuck there all day and night before I arrived to rescue her the next afternoon. Lil Bit had found a comfortable nest and settled there where she could lie and stretch out without worrying too much about falling out of the tree. As I approached her, she would push her head between the vines to get a good look at me, and every time I reached my hand toward her, she would reach a paw out to touch it. She was very relaxed and cute as she would look at me from one side of the nest or the other. She mod

As the severe heat of the summer begins to moderate, the cats seem to be discovering an urge to climb, and these two cases are the most recent. First was an unknown cat in a mobile home neighborhood in Baton Rouge. Ingrid discovered him in the tree and called me for help after he had spent one night in the tree. She had seen him in the neighborhood for a long time and knew him to be friendly, but she didn't know the owner. He was, indeed, a friendly kitty who was ready for a rescue, so all I had to do was introduce myself, pick him up, place him on my lap, and pull the bag up around him. Since he looked healthy and was a known resident, I just released him back on the ground. The next day, Selina, in St. Amant, called me in a mild panic because her sweet indoor cat, Cheese, had been stuck in a tree for thirty minutes. Normally, I like to give a cat time to learn how to come down on his own, but the timing was such that it was easier for me to do it right away. Besides, this is an i