Cutie


I don't know what to call Cutie. She is part gray tabby, orange tabby, and tortie, so I guess that makes her a torby. But she also has white which makes her like a calico. Should I call her a tortico? Or caliby? Whatever you call her, she lives up to her name and is quite a cutie. She is sweet too. That is, once she learns to trust you.

Cutie was chased by some loose dogs up a tree in the wooded area behind her home near Carriere, Mississippi, and she was stuck there for four nights before Mildred found me and the weather allowed me to rescue her. Cutie wasn't very high, and she may have eventually found a way down on her own, but there was always the threat of those dogs returning, and she felt safer in the tree even when it meant enduring some thunderstorms.

Cutie is normally a very friendly girl, but she was terrified to see me climb up to her. She walked out to the end of the limb to get as far away from me as possible, and there she stopped and let out a sad and pitiful cry of doom. I felt so sorry for her and had no quick way to reassure her. I tried to charm her and lure her to me with food, but she was not impressed. I tried to ignore her for a while, and she settled down but still would not have anything to do with me. I needed to get closer to her so she could sniff my hand and let me touch her gently.

The top of this skinny Pine tree had broken off, and there were only two limbs remaining. Cutie was on the lower one, and the other one was only one or two feet above it running roughly parallel above it. Cutie's limb was too small to hold my weight, but, fortunately, the upper limb was more substantial, and I could use it to move part of the distance out toward Cutie. Once I did that and stretched out horizontally to reach as close as I could to her, she began to feel better about me. After a little more coaxing, she stretched toward my hand, sniffed it, and rubbed her cheek on it. It took me 40 minutes in the tree with her to reach this point, but that was when I knew it would all work out well. Don't worry: I edited those 40 minutes and more out of the video below.

It still took a little more time to get her to come close to me, but she eventually relaxed and trusted me fully. I felt pretty confident she would step on my lap, so I spread the bottom of the cat bag over my lap and gathered the sides of the bag around it. She did indeed step on my lap, but she kept right on going to the other end of the limb. She came back, stepped on my lap again and kept going back and forth like this several times before I finally got her in the right spot. I pulled the bag up around her and secured her inside.

I took her down and released her inside where she reunited with Mildred as well as her feline sister. She is fully recovered now and, hopefully, will not venture out into the dangers of the outside world again.