Cat Rescue Guy

When I got a call from Jesse, I could clearly hear the sound of desperation in his voice. He wanted his cat down right now. The cat, named Coco, belongs to Jesse and his girlfriend, and Coco darted out the door of their apartment and climbed one of the trees lining the drainage ditch alongside the apartment complex property. Coco is two years old and has never been outside before. She settled at the extreme tips of a limb overhanging the ditch, and she was panting from the heat and not responding to Jesse. When I asked Jesse how long Coco had been there, he said, "Five minutes." Normally, I don't rescue a cat unless it has been stuck in a tree overnight, but this is one of the exceptions. This is a cat I do not want to come down on her own during the night because she will then get lost and may never be found again. In addition, Jesse's distress weighed heavily into my decision to go right away. After all, the rescue is as much for the owner as it is for the cat, and,...

When their cat gets stuck in a tree, most people think that a rain storm will motivate the cat to come down on its own. After all, most cats do not like being caught outside in the rain, and they will run for shelter when they do. Yet, out of all the hundreds of cases I have seen, only once have I heard of a cat coming down because of the rain. Indeed, rain almost guarantees that the cat will stay in the tree. As miserable as a cat may be in the rain, it is usually not enough to cause them to overcome their fear of falling while trying to climb down, and the rain makes the climbing conditions even worse by making the bark softer and more slippery. As much as it distresses us to think of our cat stuck in a tree during a rain storm, it is actually the best thing that can happen to them other than being rescued. Especially on hot, sunny days, the clouds alone will bring some relief from the sun, and the rain will cool their body. Furthermore, the cat will lick the water off his body and s...

Tamara was very upset when she found her cat, Crimson, up high in a tree in the woods behind her rural home near New Iberia, Louisiana. Crimson is one and a half years old now, but Tamara bottle-fed that sweet girl and raised her since she was first found as a tiny kitten. Tamara felt so helpless seeing her baby so high in the tree, and she did not hesitate to post desperate pleas for help on social media. Someone referred her to me, and I arrived there on the morning after Crimson's second night in the tree. I was a bit disheartened by the sight of the tree, and, unfortunately, I failed to get a picture of it to show here. Very little of the tree was visible because it was thoroughly smothered by a large mass of mature Poison Ivy. While there was plenty of Poison Ivy foliage, I could not find any foliage belonging to the tree. This tree was either dead or dying, but it appeared to be plenty sturdy enough to climb. The trouble would be getting my rope installed since there were onl...

I'm lucky. I worked my whole career for money, but now that I am retired, I don't have to do that anymore. Now I can work for meaning instead, and that is why I enjoy rescuing cats in trees. This means something to me, and it certainly means something to the cat. The owners vary in the degree to which it means something to them, but they all value it or they would not have called me. Some owners show it or hide it more than others, so I can't always know how much the cat means to them, but I love when it is clear that the cat means the world to them, and knowing the story behind their life together makes it even more meaningful. That is why this rescue of Lucki -- it is actually his second -- is among the most memorable and meaningful of my rescues to me. Lucki's second rescue was essentially a carbon copy of his first , and I recommend that you read that report to understand the whole story. For those with limited time or a short attention span, I will provide a summa...

Mikey is a cool dude. This orange tabby boy began appearing at Carlee's door in rural Opelousas, Louisiana for visits that gradually became longer and longer until one day it became clear that he had claimed this as his permanent home. That was fine with Carlee because she liked this friendly boy, and she was getting very attached to him. If he came from another home, he apparently felt no loyalty there, and no one reported him as missing, so Carlee claimed him as her own, and Mikey settled in as if he owned the place. Yes, this is a good place to be, and Mikey likes it. As is usually the case, we don't know why Mikey climbed the neighbor's Live Oak tree, but there he was resting at a fork in the branch about 25 feet high when Carlee found him. Mikey may have played it cool and acted as if this was not a problem, but Carlee certainly didn't. She worked hard to help Mikey down, and when all her efforts failed, she began asking for help. Mikey had spent one night in that ...

Three of the last four rescues I have done were for unknown cats, and now I have yet another one on my agenda. Morgan discovered this cat at the top of a tree at the edge of her rural property and tried to help the cat get down, but nothing was working. She did not recognize the cat, and her neighbors are not close, but the cat appeared friendly since it cried out to her and begged for help every time she went out to see it. By the time I arrived, it had been in the tree for three nights. I was a bit dismayed to see that this Sweetgum tree had no significant limbs except for the junction at the top of the tree, and that is where the cat had settled. With the cat occupying the only large limb in the whole tree, I had no place to install my rope, and that is an unusual problem to have in a tree of this size where the trunk is more than two feet in diameter. The only way I was able to climb this tree was to use a slow and tedious technique that is normally appropriate for small stems, but...

After eleven days of complete silence, I suddenly got calls for three rescues to do in one day,  Such is the irregular and unpredictable nature of my rescue schedule. To make it even more interesting, all three rescues were for unknown cats. To be clear, all these cats likely have an owner. We just don't know who they are because the cats got stuck on someone else's property, and it was the property owners who noticed the cat and called me. The first rescue was for an unknown, juvenile orange tabby who was stuck in a tree for three nights in a backyard in Central, Louisiana. The kitty appeared friendly and talkative, so I was expecting a relatively easy rescue. Installing my rope in the tree scared him a bit, and he moved farther away from his original spot. That caused me to create even more commotion in the tree as I had to move over and around some limbs to approach him in his new position. Even though he didn't appear to be highly distressed, he decided to walk farther ...