Cat Rescue Guy

It was time for another loop trip to rescue two kitties in the same general area. Both kitties were young, female gray tabbies, and both were stuck in a tree for five or six nights. The first stop was for Muffin. We don't know how Muffin ended up deep in the woods so far from her rural home, but this little girl who is not even one year old yet is lucky to be alive and even more lucky that her family found her. She climbed about 50 feet high near the top of a skinny Pine tree, probably to escape a predator, and she was stuck there for five nights. It is only the most caring and determined of people who would find her so far from home, but that is exactly what Muffin had in her family, and they tried very hard to help her down. Muffin's situation was a tricky one. Another nearby tree of similar size had fallen into Muffin's tree and was resting there against it. The tree was being held there primarily by one small limb which was pressed against the Pine stem. If that limb br...

One of my favorite ways to secure a cat in a tree before taking him back down to the ground and back home is to use what I call the lap bag. It's just a large, fabric bag like a laundry bag, and I simply spread the bottom of the bag over my lap and gather the sides of the bag around my lap. Once the cat steps on my lap, I simply raise the sides of the bag up around him. There is no rough, forcible handling of the cat, and the cat is not traumatized or even bothered by it at all. Once in the bag, he is usually calm, and he stays relaxed until he is released back home. Raising the sides of the bag around the cat does not alarm them. I suspect that if I were to jerk the bag up very quickly, the cat would reflexively jump up to escape, and given how fast cat reflexes are, he would likely succeed. Pulling the bag up slowly and gently, however, does not alarm them at all, so I never have any trouble keeping them in the bag. That is, until I met Luna, a one-year-old tortie who was stuck i...

Not every rescue has a feel-good happy ending. Some rescues simply don't go well either because the cat was difficult, the tree was difficult, or I made poor decisions. This rescue of an unknown kitty who was stuck in a Pine tree for 19 days -- yes, just two days shy of three weeks -- was one of those rescues that did not go well because the cat was difficult and I was incompetent. It ended with the cat safe on the ground, but how he got there was far from ideal. My communication with the family who discovered the cat in the tree in their rural backyard was limited because of a language barrier, but from what I learned about how talkative the cat was from the beginning, I assumed this was a tame and friendly cat, and I was naively expecting an easy rescue despite the fact that I never heard a single meow from the cat while I was below planning the rescue. When they led me to the tree and pointed to where the cat was, I could not see it at first, but at that moment, a squirrel came ...

There are quite a few cats who I have rescued multiple times. Simba still currently holds the record with eight rescues, but close on his heels are two other cats: Simon with seven rescues, and now Princess with seven. While Simba and Simon were almost always in a different tree for each rescue, Princess is unique in that each and every one of her seven rescues was in the same tree. That becomes expected when you learn that there is only one tree in her enclosed backyard, so she has no other place to escape when that mean tomcat unexpectedly intrudes into her yard. So here we are yet again for the seventh time in two years with Princess stuck in the same tree again. Princess is an easy cat to rescue because she is sweet and cooperative. Each time, all I have to do is climb the short distance up to her, hold a carrier in front of her, and she will readily step inside for a safe ride back down to the ground. I have reported most of her rescues, but I just realized that I have never made ...

How am I supposed to rescue a skittish cat at the top of a dead tree? That was the problem I faced when I was called out to Watson, Louisiana to rescue Chrissy, a one-year-old calico who had been stuck in the tree for one night. Chrissy was 40 feet high on the only remaining limb at the top of a dead tree whose top had broken off. Much of the bark was missing and the exposed wood was clearly rotting. The usu al way to rescue a cat in a tree is to climb the tree, but this tree was dead and unsafe to climb, so what can I do? Of course, the simplest option is to use a bucket truck, but I don't have a bucket truck, and even if one were available, it was not clear if it could get close enough to reach the dead tree, and it would have to park in the road where it would be blocking traffic in both directions.  Another  option is to install a "highline," that is, a long rope pulled very tightly between two taller trees on opposite sides of the dead tree and attach my rope to the ...