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.)






