Little Girl
When Tiffany called me to rescue her cat in a tree in Carriere, Mississippi, I was not concerned about the weather even though hurricane Isaias was due to make landfall that morning. The outer rain bands of the storm were close to Carriere but not expected to get any closer, so I felt it was safe to proceed. When I arrived at the site, the sky was blue, but, of course, conditions were windy. I was still not concerned until I looked up into the tall, skinny Sweetgum tree and saw the sweet nine-month-old cat, named Little Girl, at the top of the tree swaying wildly from side to side in the wind gusts. Little Girl was roughly 45 feet high and crying loudly in distress as she held tightly to the small limbs where she had settled, and I was having some serious doubts about reaching this little girl safely. The small stem of the tree rose straight up about 40 feet where it split into two smaller vertical stems, and Little Girl was up higher on one of those smaller stems. Where the...