Cat Rescue Guy

One of my favorite ways to secure a cat in a tree before taking him back down to the ground and back home is to use what I call the lap bag. It's just a large, fabric bag like a laundry bag, and I simply spread the bottom of the bag over my lap and gather the sides of the bag around my lap. Once the cat steps on my lap, I simply raise the sides of the bag up around him. There is no rough, forcible handling of the cat, and the cat is not traumatized or even bothered by it at all. Once in the bag, he is usually calm, and he stays relaxed until he is released back home. Raising the sides of the bag around the cat does not alarm them. I suspect that if I were to jerk the bag up very quickly, the cat would reflexively jump up to escape, and given how fast cat reflexes are, he would likely succeed. Pulling the bag up slowly and gently, however, does not alarm them at all, so I never have any trouble keeping them in the bag. That is, until I met Luna, a one-year-old tortie who was stuck i...

Not every rescue has a feel-good happy ending. Some rescues simply don't go well either because the cat was difficult, the tree was difficult, or I made poor decisions. This rescue of an unknown kitty who was stuck in a Pine tree for 19 days -- yes, just two days shy of three weeks -- was one of those rescues that did not go well because the cat was difficult and I was incompetent. It ended with the cat safe on the ground, but how he got there was far from ideal. My communication with the family who discovered the cat in the tree in their rural backyard was limited because of a language barrier, but from what I learned about how talkative the cat was from the beginning, I assumed this was a tame and friendly cat, and I was naively expecting an easy rescue despite the fact that I never heard a single meow from the cat while I was below planning the rescue. When they led me to the tree and pointed to where the cat was, I could not see it at first, but at that moment, a squirrel came ...

There are quite a few cats who I have rescued multiple times. Simba still currently holds the record with eight rescues, but close on his heels are two other cats: Simon with seven rescues, and now Princess with seven. While Simba and Simon were almost always in a different tree for each rescue, Princess is unique in that each and every one of her seven rescues was in the same tree. That becomes expected when you learn that there is only one tree in her enclosed backyard, so she has no other place to escape when that mean tomcat unexpectedly intrudes into her yard. So here we are yet again for the seventh time in two years with Princess stuck in the same tree again. Princess is an easy cat to rescue because she is sweet and cooperative. Each time, all I have to do is climb the short distance up to her, hold a carrier in front of her, and she will readily step inside for a safe ride back down to the ground. I have reported most of her rescues, but I just realized that I have never made ...

How am I supposed to rescue a skittish cat at the top of a dead tree? That was the problem I faced when I was called out to Watson, Louisiana to rescue Chrissy, a one-year-old calico who had been stuck in the tree for one night. Chrissy was 40 feet high on the only remaining limb at the top of a dead tree whose top had broken off. Much of the bark was missing and the exposed wood was clearly rotting. The usu al way to rescue a cat in a tree is to climb the tree, but this tree was dead and unsafe to climb, so what can I do? Of course, the simplest option is to use a bucket truck, but I don't have a bucket truck, and even if one were available, it was not clear if it could get close enough to reach the dead tree, and it would have to park in the road where it would be blocking traffic in both directions.  Another  option is to install a "highline," that is, a long rope pulled very tightly between two taller trees on opposite sides of the dead tree and attach my rope to the ...

One long day. A 400 mile loop. Three rescues. That just about sums up the day except to say that this was possible only because all three cats were sweet and cooperative. First was an unknown cat who had been stuck in a tree for at least four nights in Pearl River, Louisiana. A neighbor reported him to me, but I went there without knowing the cat owner or the property owner. I was planning to knock on the property owner's door to see if they would let me rescue the kitty, but I got lucky and found both the property owner and cat owner there outside looking at the cat when I arrived. I introduced myself and offered to rescue the cat, and they both welcomed me with relief. Trent is the cat owner, and his cat's name is Curtis. Curtis had been missing for ten days, and Trent was greatly relieved to finally find his five-year-old boy in this tree. We don't know exactly how long Curtis had been stuck in the tree, but we are sure that the neighbor who reported him knew that Curtis...