Luna

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 in a tree for three nights in Central, Louisiana.

Luna is a sweet girl. She welcomed me in the tree with her, let me pet her right away, and enjoyed the touching and attention she had been wanting so badly. She was a prime candidate for the lap bag, so I spread the bottom of the bag over my lap and encouraged her to step on my lap. She was very happy to place her front legs on my lap but very reluctant to let her back legs join them. She seemed suspicious of this bag from the start, so it took much more time and reassurance than usual to get her to place all four legs on my lap at the same time. When she finally did so, as soon as I began to reach for the sides of the bag, she immediately jumped back onto the limb. How did this smart girl know that this was a trap? I'm sure she has never encountered this trick before, but she was acting as if she knew exactly what I was doing, and she is the first cat I have ever tried to rescue who suspected that.

Fortunately, I am patient. I spent several minutes up there with her getting her repeatedly to step on my lap only to have her step back on the limb as soon as I started to pull up the bag, but because I let her go back to the tree each time without a fight or restraint, she always came back, and each time it happened, it became less alarming or worrisome. I eventually got her in the bag, and I did have to pull it up more quickly than usual, but she handled it well without panic or even fussing. Like most of the others, she settled quietly in the bag and remained relaxed until she was released back inside her comfortable home. So all is well again for Luna and her family, but I am left troubled and wondering how she knew that lap bag was a trap.