Cat Rescue Guy

Silly me.  When I got the call to rescue Nunu, a super sweet and friendly 6-month old gray tabby girl, I thought this would be an easy rescue.  Little did I know that she was not going to let me get close enough to see just how sweet she is.  While this was by no means one of the most difficult rescues I have done, she certainly did make it much harder than it needed to be. Nunu originally came to her family when they rescued her from a tree during a terrible storm.  She was low enough that they could reach her with a ladder, and once they brought her down to the ground, they also brought her into their hearts.  Now, she was in a tree once again, but this time she was out of the reach of their ladder.  When I arrived, I found her about 40 feet high in a pine tree in the side yard. I did not have a good enough view of the branches above her to set my ropes there, so instead, I installed my rope on a branch about ten feet below her and planned to work my ...

It's a small world.  Several months ago, I noticed a post on the Lost Pets of Baton Rouge Facebook page for a cat named CeCe that had become lost when it escaped in the parking lot of the veterinarian's office.  CeCe's owners were out of town and a relative was taking care of the cats.  When the caretaker noticed that CeCe was having a health problem, she took her to the vet right away.  When she arrived at the vet's office, CeCe escaped and ran off.  All attempts to find her failed. After reading that post, I felt compelled to go help look for her.  I felt that there was a good chance that CeCe could have climbed a tree, and if she had, I wanted to help find her and bring her down.  I was familiar with the area, and there was a creek that ran alongside the vet's office with a large area of wilderness containing numerous trees.  There were hundreds of other places for a cat to hide there as well, and it would take more than just one pair of ey...

I have never seen so many people in one neighborhood work together to help rescue a cat.  First, I got a call from Jane to see if I could help.  It was too late in the day to rescue the cat that day, but I promised to do so in the morning.  In the morning, I got a call from another neighbor, Amy, to let me know that the cat was still there and to see when I could come.  Just before I could leave, I got another call from another person, Allison, to report a cat stuck in a tree.  At first, I thought she was reporting a different cat, but as we talked, we realized that this was the same cat.  Allison just did not know that her other neighbors had already reported it.  Many other neighbors had noticed the cat in the tree while they walked by and were also concerned.  Some had banded together to try to rescue the cat themselves the day before.  They called the fire department, tried a ladder and even rigged an "elevator" to pull up to the cat, b...

Kristy went out to the shed in her backyard to clean out some things that were damaged in the recent flood.  With her was her dog, Blue, who was on a leash.  As they went out into the yard, they noticed a young Siamese cat sitting in the yard.  Blue lives with cats and gets along well with them, but this was an unknown foreign cat, and he felt it was his duty to chase it away.  He bolted toward the cat so quickly and forcefully that he pulled the leash out of Kristy’s hand.  She ran after Blue who was running after the cat who was running for his life.  The cat ran under the back fence into a dense, overgrown wild area with Blue following closely behind.  Kristy was unable to get through the fence as quickly as they did and she listened as she heard them tangle somewhere in the weeds out of sight.  The cat ran up a pine tree on the edge of the property line to escape the danger, while Kristy managed to get Blue back to her and take him inside. ...

The great flood of August 2016 displaced thousands of people and their pets.  It is a very difficult and stressful experience for people, but at least they can understand what has happened and know how to adapt.  Thousands of cats, however, have been disoriented by this sudden, drastic and unexplained event which made their territory unrecognizable and removed all traces of their scent and objects that defined their ownership there.  Many cats have been lost as they tried to escape the rising water.  Others survived the flood only to find their own home unrecognizable as all the things inside, including the walls and floors, are removed and piled in a huge heap in the yard.  Suddenly their own home is a strange and foreign place with no trace of their own scent to tell them that they belong here.  For a cat, that is a scary thing, and many have been lost as they wandered off looking for something familiar.   Such may be the case with Dawson, the friend...