Coco

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, since Coco was known to be a very friendly girl even with strangers, it seemed like a straight-forward rescue to do. That assumption turned out to be very wrong.

When I arrived, Jesse was there waiting for me. As I studied the situation, Jesse made frequent comments regarding his determination to get Coco down. He would do whatever it takes including climbing the tree himself. When I explained that Coco could fall or jump during my rescue, he emphatically said he would catch her. No matter what happened, he was not going to let her get away. I tried to explain how difficult it is to catch a cat and how the cat would scratch him up badly, and, again, he was emphatic and confident that he would catch her no matter how badly she scratched him. As I was preparing to shoot my line into the tree, his girlfriend arrived and proceeded to go straight to the tree. When I asked what she was doing, she said she was going to climb the tree to get her cat. She was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers and had no equipment or plan about how she was going to climb the tree. On one hand, I am tempted to let her go ahead and learn just how difficult and dangerous it is, but on the other hand, I don't want anyone to get hurt. It has happened before. Sometimes, I get the call to rescue the cat only after someone has fallen out of the tree while trying to rescue their cat. It can be a very costly, life-altering mistake. I talked her out of it, and she retreated, but as I resumed my attempt to get a rope installed in the tree, Jesse left without a word and returned a few minutes later carrying a double-long shipping pallet and began to lean it up against the tree. He was going to use it as a ladder to begin climbing the tree himself. I understand and even appreciate their impatience and determination, and I admit that the troubles I was having at the beginning were not making a good impression about my own abilities, but, again, I had to talk him out of climbing the tree so that I could proceed.

I finished installing my rope and climbed up into the tree, but Coco was at the extreme tips of a limb, and I could not get any closer than eight feet from her. She sat there motionless except for the panting and had little reaction to anything. She seemed too exhausted to react to anything, but that seemed inconsistent with the fact that she had been in the tree only a couple hours at most. She hardly looked at me and had no reaction to food even when I reached it out directly under her nose. I simply could not get her motivated to come to me at all, and I could not get any closer to her. There was no room to maneuver a long catch-pole in this tree, so the only solution I had left was to cut the limb slowly. The hope is that, as the limb droops slowly downward, Coco will begin moving back up the limb toward me where I could grab her and bag her. If she does not do that, then Jesse was there below to catch her if she fell. It would be a very short fall, and I gave him some netting to use to catch her with instructions to wrap her up quickly so she doesn't escape. I gave him netting instead of a tarp or blanket so that it would be more difficult for the cat to get solid footing to escape, and, knowing how determined he was to do whatever it took, I thought the chances were good that he would succeed.

With the plan settled and in place, I rigged the limb so that it would stay attached to the tree and not fall on Jesse below and then proceeded to cut the limb. As the limb began slowly drooping, Coco began to shift her weight around. Now that the limb was level, it would have been easy for her to walk along the limb to me, but I still could not get her to come any closer to me. I cut the limb some more, and the limb began to droop slowly until it was vertical. Some cats will begin climbing up the limb at that point, and if Coco would do that, then I could grab her. Coco held on, but she would not climb any higher. Now it was time to shake her loose so she would fall into Jesse's arms. At this point, I could not see Coco or Jesse since my view was blocked by the foliage, but after a few seconds of shaking the limb, I saw Coco on the ground running freely onto the grounds of the school on the other side of the ditch out of my sight. Jesse went running after her, and I felt sick that we had failed to secure her. Now I was worried that Coco would get lost and never be seen again. I began to wonder what else I could have done to secure Coco in the tree and prevent her from getting loose. As I was thinking about that and working my way back down out of the tree, I saw Jesse return holding Coco by the scruff. I didn't know how he caught her, but I was amazed and thrilled that he did. I told him to wrap her up in the netting and take her inside, and he did exactly that. He was not going to let her escape this time. He returned a few minutes later and told me what happened. When Coco fell, he caught her perfectly but could not contain her before she escaped. Coco ran across the parking lot and eventually came to a tree which she intended to climb. She jumped up onto the tree trunk but was too exhausted to climb it. She just hung there long enough for Jesse to catch up to her and grab her.

I know that Coco is relieved to be back home, and I know that Jesse and his girlfriend are relieved to have her safe at home again, but I think I am more relieved than they are that this ended as well as it did. We were all very lucky that it ended this way, but I need to find a better way to handle this kind of situation in the future so that I don't need to rely on luck again.