Charlie

I was getting conflicting information from the family about Charlie's disposition, but as long as at least one person says that Charlie is friendly and likes to sit on your lap, then I figure I have a good chance at befriending this four-year-old, orange tabby boy. Charlie was stuck in a tall Pine tree in his backyard in Gonzales, Louisiana for four hot, July days, and his family had been frantically trying to find a way to get him down. When I arrived, Charlie was about 35 feet high in the tree, and I was expecting a routine rescue.

It is almost standard practice for me to set a rope very high in the tree even if the cat is very low, and there are three reasons for that: (1) Installing my rope in the tree causes some noise and disturbance in the tree which usually frightens most cats, so the farther away the cat is from that disturbance, the less frightened he will be. (2) If the cat stays low but goes far out on a limb to get away from me, then having my rope set high makes it easier and safer for me to go far out on the limb toward him. (3) If a cat gets scared of me and climbs higher, it is to my advantage to have my rope already set up high so that I don't have to climb higher in slow, small increments. In Charlie's tree, I saw only two reasonable places to install my rope: one very close to Charlie, and one almost 80 feet high at the top of the tree. I chose the one at the top of the tree, and it's a good thing I did.

As I climbed up to Charlie, I looked up ahead and could see Charlie peering down at me with a very concerned look on his face. I stopped to avoid scaring him higher and to give him some time to adjust to me while I tried to prove my friendly intentions, but Charlie was not falling for any of that false familiarity salesmanship. As soon as I took one more step up higher, Charlie started climbing higher to keep a safe distance between us. I didn't follow him right away, because I didn't want to give him the impression that I was chasing him, and I took some more time to let him know that I was not a threat. After a while, I eased up slowly and did my best to reassure him, but Charlie still didn't like what he saw and climbed higher still. At one point, I managed to get close enough to him that I got his attention with a squeeze-tube treat, and, while he liked that very much, it didn't change his attitude toward me. He still continued to climb higher until he was at the top of the tree where I had installed my rope.

Once he was at the top of the tree, Charlie inspected all the limbs up there and decided his escape options were too limited up there. He thought he was better off farther down, so he started jumping down from one limb to the next until he was below me a safe distance. I let him settle down there, and then I slowly came down to that level with him where we were about 65 feet high. He let me get close to him again but only because he wanted some more of that squeeze-tube treat. While he licked the treat, I took a chance and began to touch his back. He flinched at first but allowed me to continue to pet him even though he didn't appear to like it. At this point, I decided I had best get the cat bag ready on my arm, pet him, grab him by the scruff, and then invert the bag over him. At that time, I thought there was no chance that he would step on my lap, but after watching the video of those moments, I thought I could have used his strong drive for the treat to lure him on my lap for an easy rescue. I wish I had given that a chance instead of progressing straight to grabbing him by the scruff, because grabbing his scruff did not go well. Charlie managed to pull himself free of my grip very quickly, and from that point, there was no way I would be able to gain his trust again. Charlie walked out to the end of a limb there and settled in the foliage where I could not even see him.

My hope for an easy, routine rescue was now over, and the only thing I knew to do at this point was to set a trap on his limb. I went back down, retrieved the trap, prepared it on the ground where I could pull it up to me after I climb back up into the tree, and then climbed back up to Charlie's limb. I tied a rope to the trap and carried the rope with me when I climbed back up, but when I got there and reached for the rope, it was not there. Unknown to me, the rope had somehow detached from my harness at some point and fallen back to the ground, and I had just completed a hot, strenuous, 65-foot climb in mid-90s temperature for nothing. I spent a few minutes trying to accept my fate, and then I went back down, retrieved the rope and climbed back up for the third time to Charlie's limb again. This time I still had the rope with me, but when I started pulling the trap up to me, the trap got caught in some limbs so badly that I could not free it. I had to go back down again to untangle the trap, and, this time, I attached the trap to my harness and climbed back up to Charlie's limb for the fourth time. I was already fairly dehydrated before I even started the first climb, and I was now pretty exhausted. I barely had enough energy left to lift the trap onto Charlie's limb, and then I was horrified to see that the back door of the trap was missing. The trap I use has a removable back door so that it can be replaced with a clear back door to use for those cats who are especially wary of the trap. The door can be locked, of course, but I apparently forgot to lock it before bringing it up into the tree with me where it fell out somewhere along the way. I was too exhausted to go back down to find the door and climb back up a fifth time, so I began to wonder what I could do to improvise a solution. The back of the trap would be pressed against the stem of the tree, but this stem was not large enough to cover the entire opening. I decided to use my cat bag to cover the back end of the trap. This would provide a visual barrier to the cat which might work well enough, but it would not stop a cat from pushing himself through it if he was determined enough. It was the best I could do, so I finished installing the trap that way and went back down.

Once I was back on the ground, I had no choice but to rest. I sat in my air-conditioned car, drank all the water I had brought with me, and rested there for about 30 minutes. Often, a cat will go investigate the trap only a few minutes after I leave, but when I used my binoculars to check on Charlie after my 30 minute rest, he was still resting in the same spot and showing no interest in moving. Some cats won't move until nightfall, so I assumed Charlie would wait till then. After my rest, I felt that I had enough energy to climb back up there a fifth time to put the back door of the trap in place so that I don't have to take a chance with my cat bag, so that is what I did. Charlie was still showing no sign of moving, so I went home and told the family to call me when he goes into the trap.

I had been home only an hour or two when I got the call: Charlie is in the trap. We were all greatly relieved, but I could not go right away to bring him down because thunderstorms were beginning to pass over the area, and it would not be safe for me to be in a tree during that time. We waited until the storms settled down, and then I went back out there and climbed back up the tree for the sixth and final time to bring Charlie down. He was wet from the rain, but he needed that water badly after being stuck in the tree for four hot days.

Charlie's family had been very worried about him, and they were all greatly relieved to have him safe at home again and very grateful to me for all the effort I put into getting him down even though much of the effort was all my own fault. Still, I was pretty worn out and wishing for another day to recover and rest. Unfortunately, I didn't get my wish, but that is another story.