How to get a cat out of a tree

This is my good friend Duchess. Isn't she cute? She likes head scratches.




This is a clump of red cedar trees. They aren't that cute. I don't know how they feel about branch scratches.

One day, Duchess decided to climb one of these trees. They are very dense, with lots of dead leaves near the trunk that fall down if you shake the tree. There are a great deal of small branches shooting off from the trunk in all directions. With these five trees in a row, there's a lot going on in there.

So Duchess got to the top, looked down, and said, "Uh oh." She went as high as the telephone wire, which cuts through the trees and is thick enough so she could walk on it and have a path from the tree on one end all the way to the tree on the other. So she could go sideways but not down. And she was 30 feet up.

She was not happy about this. When she didn't show up for dinner, I knew something was up. Then I heard the pathetic meowing coming from our trees.

We couldn't see her in the thickness of the trees unless she found a hole and stuck her little face out. We stood on our second floor balcony and called to her. She meowed at us. Her mother cat stood on the wall at the base of the trees and meowed at her. She meowed back. So we were having lots of conversations, but no movement.

The days and nights went on. We rigged up all sorts of contraptions to get food over to her and to try to provide her with a bridge to walk over to our balcony. No dice. We worried about her starving up there and leaving a white corpse. We couldn't sleep for worry; she meowed most pathetically at 3am.

Q: Have you ever seen a cat corpse in a tree? A: No, because the corpse falls out of the tree. Or something like that -- look, I searched my old friend the internet for help, and mostly found either lame jokes about dead cats or lame advice like "wait for her to come down" or "put food at the bottom of the tree" or "get another cat".

On the third day of the kitten tree-sitting adventure, we tried calling our friendly city officials. The fire department sent a guy who looked around and said it'd be too dangerous for their truck and basket to maneuver up there. Pardon my vernacular, but HELLO? Too dangerous for the fire department? I thought their middle name was dangerous. Not when it comes to kitty cats, I guess. At least he came to visit.

Animal control said they didn't have ladders high enough. They said to get a ladder, somehow assuming we had access to higher ladders than they do. They didn't even send someone to look.

City tree trimmers were working nearby, but we couldn't get ahold of them in time.

We called private tree trimmers who either refused or didn't answer the phone or didn't call back.

Our building has a 20 foot ladder, so we tried that but couldn't coax Duchess down far enough. Alas, 20 feet is not the same as 30 feet.

We called a cat rescue lady from our neighborhood who is a true cat crusader and will do anything to help a cat. She is a god-send. She helped us trap, tame and adopt out a family of very gentle feral cats. She was alarmed about Duchess and pissed off at the city for not helping.

She contacted a cat-friendly friend of hers who had some tree trimmers at her house with a long ladder. On the fourth night, she asked (forced?) them to come over to our place. A super-nice father and son came with their ladder after a long day of work and tried to help.

We had rigged up a bucket-and-pulley system to get food up to Duchess, with the hope that she would somehow jump in the bucket and we could lower her down. Duchess ran away from the tree man, but he did secure the bucket for us so she could reach it.

He then promised to come back the next day. I couldn't believe he was being so nice when everyone else had shrugged their shoulders.

He came back the next afternoon. I asked our neighbor if we could put the ladder in his yard (the yard you can see in the picture). Our side of the trees has a driveway sloping underground, and a small side yard with little room to maneuver. Duchess was by this time near the phone lines on the left-most tree in the picture. We've lived here almost six years and had never spoken to this neighbor. He was very nice and said go ahead. He was also maybe high.

We were all a little pissed at Duchess for not just jumping on the neighbor's roof, but we figured it was too far for her.

The following happened within fifteen minutes of the tree man arriving: he set up his ladder, climbed up and reached for Duchess, she cowered away from him and screamed a bit, he came back down for his tree tools to be able to get closer, I gave him a pillowcase to put her in to get her down.

(I forgot to say: my web search did bring up one useful story, of some young men who rigged up a basket system to rescue their cat, and as they put it up, the cat panicked and simply jumped out of the tree. That gave me the idea for the basket-and-pulley, and also some hope that Duchess really would get down when she had to.)

So the tree man went back up, pushed aside some branches with his tool, and climbed closer to Duchess. She panicked, pushed her way out the side of the tree on the left, and LEAPT the 30 feet down to the sidewalk.

My neighbor, two bystanders and I GASPED.

She wobbled to her side when she landed, then straightened up and took off running away from us down the sidewalk and around the corner. She ran full tilt without limping.

I rejoiced. I ran after her but couldn't find her, but I was convinced she was fine because of the way she ran. The tree man was very worried, but I thanked him and assured him she'd be fine and would come home. He wasn't so sure.




(dramatic reenactment)

I thanked him again. He had already refused any kind of payment the night before. He packed up his ladder and left.

I searched the area for Duchess for the next few hours. I went out back by her food bowl. Maybe three or four hours after her big leap, I turned around and she was chomping at her food.

She said hello nonchalantly. She was none the worse for wear and not even particularly hungry. You couldn't even tell anything had happened. I petted her and felt around for broken bones or pain, but she was a-ok.

We thanked our two cat lady friends and got the tree man's address and sent him a Home Depot gift card and and a note assuring him that the cat was fine.

So the moral of the story is: cat rescue people are amazing and no-nonsense cat advocates who will help you in this situation. Give their organizations money if they work with one! Also, some individuals are extremely nice. Also, cats are mysterious and also cute.

If you have a cat in a tree, I'd say try the bucket thing. I know it's hard to wait, especially after the third and fourth days. Get a tree trimmer. Maybe put something on the ground to lessen the cat's jump? Don't give up on them. Keep talking to them. Contact cat rescue people (who rule).

And call the fire department, if it isn't too dangerous.