Cat Rescue Guy

Just as Karen came in the door to her home, Heather darted out and climbed the tree. Heather is a sweet, six-month-old tortie who got stuck 50 feet high in a tree by her house in Robert, Louisiana, and she was not happy about it. By the time I rescued her, she had been in the tree a total of only eight or nine hours, but that was far too long for her.  Heather was glad to see me and started purring as soon as I climbed up to her. She purred while we visited in the tree. She purred while she gave me a head-butt. She purred in my lap even as I pulled the bag up around her. She purred in the bag all the way down to the ground. And she purred as Karen took her inside the house.  Kitties don't get much sweeter and cuter than this little purring machine, and rescues don't get much easier.

Three weeks. Exactly twenty-one days. That's how long Noonie was stuck in the tree in her front yard in Basile. To make matters worse, she was stuck in one spot and could not move very much the entire time. People get bedsores just from being on a soft bed for a long time, so it's no surprise that Noonie developed sores and raw spots from rubbing and pressing against the rough bark of a tree for three weeks. She had a bloody sore on her upper leg and scraped the hair off the bottom of her feet, and I can only imagine how tired her muscles must feel. Poor baby.  Her owner, Linda, was sick with worry the whole time, and she could not find anyone who could get her kitty down. Eventually, a friend of mine heard about the cat from a friend of Linda's and brought us all together. Noonie's rescue was not easy. Noonie was sweet and cooperative, but the tree and the spot she was in were problematic. Noonie was 40 feet high on a slightly leaning stem that had no limbs below her, ...

Louie is a sweet boy, but he is very wary of strangers, so it wasn't a surprise to see this nine-month-old Siamese mix go all the way out to the end of the limb to get away from me. Louie had been stuck in this tree in his next door neighbor's backyard for two nights in Livingston, and he was now about 40 feet high. Fortunately, his limb was not a very long one, but he was still beyond my reach, and the limb was not structurally sound enough to allow me to put any weight on it. I struggled to make friends with Louie from afar, but he was unimpressed and would not come closer to me. I finagled ways to safely move out closer to him without stressing his limb, and I could see him finally softening his stance with me. He stepped closer to me to sniff my outstretched hand, but then stepped back to his original spot. I regarded that as progress, and worked to stretch out even closer to him. I needed to be close enough to touch him if I was ever going to convince him that I was friend...

Trixie jumped the big ditch and went into the woods behind her house in Denham Springs, and, as a result of this violation of house rules, ended up stuck in a tree. Hopefully, this one-year-old girl learned a valuable lesson after spending one night in that tree, but I wouldn't bet on it. Fortunately, Trixie was easy enough to rescue if you discount the troubles of getting to the tree and climbing it using a slower and more tedious method. She had reservations about me a few times but always let me talk her into coming back to me and trusting me again. She was very friendly overall and let me bag her with ease, and she was soon back at home relaxing with her feline brother who had missed her.

This unknown brown tabby was stuck in a tree for thirteen days. He showed up in a Sweet Gum tree in Bruce's backyard  in a very remote area near Bush, Louisiana, and Bruce worked hard to find a way to get him down. When all his efforts to help the kitty failed, he worked hard to feed it in the tree. Bruce stood at the top of a tall ladder and used a very long pole to hold some food up to the cat. Bruce could barely reach the cat, and he could hold the food in place only a few moments before tiring, but he managed to feed the cat enough to buy some more time to find a solution. Generally, tame cats will cry and talk to people below while feral cats remain quiet, so when Bruce told me that this cat had not made a single sound in thirteen days, I figured this must surely be a feral cat. But that is not always the case. I once had a perfectly quiet kitty turn into a sweetheart once I climbed up to it, so I won't truly know about this case until I see more behavior. Once I started c...