Muffin and Iris

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 broke, the tree would surely fall to the ground. Muffin was above the leaning tree, and since her tree was spindly, I thought I would climb a slightly larger Pine close to it and bend Muffin's tree over to me until I could reach her. As I was looking for a place to install my rope in that taller tree, Muffin began to get excited with all the attention of everyone on the ground and began to work her way downward in small, slow increments. By the time I settled on a spot for installing my rope, Muffin was below the point where I would be able to bend her tree enough to reach her. I considered climbing the taller Pine tree and pulling myself over to Muffin's tree below her and then climbing up to her, but that would have placed me too much in the path of the leaning tree if it fell. Though it was far from ideal, the best option I had was to climb Muffin's tree the slow way by cinching a rope around her stem as high as I could reach, climb to that point, cinch another rope around the stem as high as I could reach from there, and keep alternating between the two ropes while being careful to keep myself out of the path of the leaning tree if it fell.

Muffin was perched just above the intersection of the two trees, and she welcomed me as I approached her. We didn't waste much time with small talk. We just introduced ourselves to each other, and then I held a carrier in front of her. Muffin inspected the carrier carefully and sniffed it thoroughly to be sure it was safe, and when she was satisfied, she stepped inside. I closed the door and brought her back down to her worried family. They drove her home and then came back to return the carrier while I continued to pack up my gear. Muffin is doing just fine, and her family is finally enjoying some relief from the stress of the past few days.

After rescuing Muffin, I drove straight from there to rescue Iris, a sweet, indoor-only kitty who escaped and climbed a very tall Pine tree at the edge of the woods behind her rural home. Iris had been missing for two days when they finally found her in the tree, and it was four days later when I arrived to rescue her, so she was probably in the tree for all of those six nights.

Iris probably would have been an easy, cooperative cat to rescue, but she became very frightened by the excessive commotion I created high in the tree with her when I had trouble installing my rope. She walked all the way out to the flimsy end of the limb to get as far away as possible, and when I climbed up to her, she stayed out there. I did my best to reassure her and lure her back to me, but she wasn't budging. She was about 20 feet out the limb, and it was too small and too high for me to go out there to her without shaking the limb and causing her to fall. The only option I had was to set a trap on her limb and wait for her to go in it. We were at least 80 feet high, and I was not happy to think about going all the way back down to retrieve the trap and then climb all the way back up again. I begrudgingly went back down, retrieved the trap, and started climbing back up again. Once I was a little over halfway up, I heard a sound behind me and turned to look. Since I had my back to Iris, I didn't see exactly how it happened, but Iris was in a very precarious spot at the extreme end of the limb, and she lost her footing and fell all the way down to the ground. She spread out her body and landed properly and then ran back toward home. I watched until she was out of my sight but could not see where she went.

Iris had just moved here to her new home two months earlier, and she had never been outside before. I was very worried that she would not know where to go and would become lost. It was encouraging to see that she at least ran in the right direction, but her owner was not home at that moment, so there was no one there with whom she felt safe. I told the other people there to keep the door cracked open and keep the environment there as calm as possible. I packed up all my gear and left feeling worried about this cat.

Iris did indeed return home later that day, and she appears to be fine and is safe at home again. She was at least 80 feet high when she fell, and that is the highest I have ever seen a cat fall. Cats are incredibly remarkable in their ability to survive such a fall without injury. As long as they don't hit any limbs along the way and land on flat, soft ground, their odds are actually quite good. They just instinctively know the proper way to land. It's just too bad that they don't instinctively know how to climb down a tree.