Cat Rescue Guy

I can't explain it. I don't know why I haven't had to rescue a cat stuck in a tree for over three weeks. Such is the random nature of the "business" plus the fact that fewer cats get stuck in a tree during the hot season here. It has been so quiet lately that I began to wonder if my phone was broken, but this May vacation has been interrupted now thanks to a sweet, but cautious, orange tabby girl named Snooki. Snooki is about four months old, and she was stuck in an old, tall Oak tree which was covered with vines and closely bordered on two sides by some dangerous electrical power lines. These lines did not touch the tree at any point, but the tall tree hung over them, and they were still close enough to be very concerning. To prevent shooting my line over the power lines, I always shoot away from them, but with the lines bordering two sides of the tree, I was very limited in places where I could shoot to install my rope. The only good place available was the same...

I have seen frightened cats at the end of a long limb who came toward me, not because they wanted to make friends, but because they wanted to sneak past me so they could get away from me by going back toward the trunk where they could go higher, lower, or out on another limb. I have seen friendly cats come to me, walk away, and return to me just because they were excited and needed to keep moving, but this is the first time I have seen a friendly, trusting cat come to me and keep going past me without returning even though she was clearly comfortable with me. Then, to make it more interesting, after she went past me, she disappeared.  I have certainly had cases where the cat was very difficult to find in the tree from the start, but this is the first time I have ever had a cat disappear in the tree after we became friends and established an excellent level of comfort and trust.  That is what Little Mama did. Little Mama is a mystery torby kitty who showed up at Donna's door in...

Hannah contacted me to see if I could help with a cat stuck in a tree behind her parent's house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They had been hearing a cat crying off and on for five days, and they just discovered it in a very large oak tree just behind their backyard fence on the bank of a creek. They didn't recognize the cat, so I gave them my usual instructions about asking their neighbors, checking for Lost Cat signs and online posts, and posting notices on the local Nextdoor and Lost Pets sites. It is usually to the finder's advantage to locate the owner so the problem and responsibility can be given to them, and sometimes, the owner may be able to coax the cat down when no one else can. I agreed to go there in the morning, and I hoped that the owner could be found by the time I arrived there. It so happened that there was a Lost Cat flyer that had been placed at all the intersections of the neighborhood, and it was possible this cat could be a match. They called the number...

I was naively expecting an easy rescue when I arrived at Kamryn's house in Livingston, Louisiana that morning, but I was surprised by what I found. Yes, Kamryn told me that her cat was very high, but that is what everyone says, and "high" does not necessarily mean it will be difficult. This kind of "high," however, is different. The cat, Alphie, was in a wooded area at the top of a tall, skinny, and floppy Tallow tree that had no limbs until the top. The height at 60 feet was not a problem, but my weight at the top of a tall, flimsy stick like this would be too much for it to hold without flopping me over until it snapped in two. When trees grow in a wooded setting, they tend to grow tall and skinny in order to reach the sunlight they need. When a cat is stuck in one of these trees, often there are other larger and taller trees nearby that I can climb instead and still be within reach of the cat. That was not the case this time. All the trees were roughly the sa...

How am I supposed to rescue a three-year-old cat who is skittish with strangers and doesn't like anyone to touch her or pick her up? Well, if it's Millie, the long-hair princess kitty in Hammond, Louisiana, the answer is simply to let her step on my lap. Of course, I spread the bottom of the cat bag over my lap first. I wasn't expecting it to be that easy, and I had been planning for all kinds of other options, but I approached Millie gently and slowly, and she responded with trust. That, and she desperately wanted to get down out of that tree after spending one long miserable night there. To be fair, she was certainly nervous when I first approached her, and at one point I could see her looking upward for an escape path even though she really didn't want to go there, but in the end, gentle patience won the game. Millie was slow about getting on my lap. First, she placed only her front legs on my lap and then stepped back on the limb. She did that two more times and eve...