Cat Rescued after Eight Days in Tree!

She's down! After one week living in a squirrel's nest 30 feet above the good, safe earth, the cat is down.

The Humane Society said not to worry, cats were survivors and would come down. Animal Control doesn't rescue cats from trees. The fire department didn't answer either phone number (I didn't dare call 911). I couldn't find any macho bubbas to help out, either. You could hear the cat crying from our bedroom. It was enough to tempt us to shoot her down, just so we wouldn't feel so bad for her.

After calling anyone I could think of, my hairdresser made two very good suggestions. One was to get a piece of PVC and run a loop of rope through it. Use the PVC to reach up to where the cat is and loop the rope around its body. Tighten the rope and lower the cat down. (This idea was after she called her husband because she was worried about the cat.)

The other suggestion was to call our local TV station that has a program about solving local people's problems and tell them I have a very photogenic problem they can solve. So I did and left a voicemail.

Next I told Paul that I had called WIS-TV, which horrified him because he didn’t want them out here filming (they never called me back) so he sprung into action. Not that he had been inactive before, but he liked the idea of the rope and the PVC and arranged that very thing. Trouble is, he could only get the cat's foot or a neck hooked. It was like fishing for a cat in a tree. The cat was over 30 feet up.

Then Paul did something I couldn’t believe. He shimmied up the tree like Mowgli in “The Jungle Book.” He went up like a squirrel. No grasping of tree limbs (since the tree was bald in the middle section), just arms and legs around the trunk. I thought he was probably going to find out whether or not he could fly, but he made it. Then he caught the cat and climbed down by setting her on different branches as he went down, then would go down a little, grab the cat and put the cat on a lower branch, etc. Of course at one point the cat hung onto the tree and wouldn’t let go.

The cat is FAT! Not obese, but robust in figure. One week in the tree and no food. I don’t believe this cat ever came down. The cat food I left out and the tuna were untouched until Tiger found them. I think it was a 300 lb. cat that is now a 200 lb. cat. She’s got a beautiful coat, lovely green eyes and is so friendly you can’t take her picture. (I’m trying to do a flyer to stick in mailboxes – this cat has to be somebody’s pet.) The first thing she wanted to do was come inside. And she rubs on you and rubs on you and rubs on you and purrs and talks. I could get used to this cat. Of course, that would make 4.

I took the cat to a nearby vet clinic and they scanned for a microchip. No microchip but they confirmed that it’s a female cat. I asked the attendant to check and he pulled up her tail. She squirted poo on him – I didn’t know cats did that. They had a word for it and said that cats do it in the wild when they’re scared. If I even mention this to my husband, I’m sure he won’t even like the idea of a poo-squiring cat sleeping on our porch while we look for a home.

It's so nice to have her out of the tree. She was up there one night when it was only 20 degrees! Now, to find her owner or a home. (Or talk Paul into letting us have four cats, two horses, a dog and a rabbit.)

Comments

[Anwyn]

Holy moley. I'm glad the cat is okay. I'm glad Paul is okay. And the whole story makes me a little more relieved about the cat who was accidentally shut into my parents' shed for probably five days--maybe she didn't suffer as much as I'd think.

[groovyoldlady]

Hurray!!!!!!!