'Moe' - The Kitty Who REscued Herself

Details

It was about noon on a Tuesday when I received a text message from Hope about her kitty that had been stuck in a pine tree in Gore Springs MS for a couple of days. The kitty had initially been very high (50 ft), but had worked her way down to about 20 ft but did not seem to be able to descend the rest of the way. Hope asked me to come out the next day if the kitty was not down by that evening. I made arrangements to be there at 8:00 am the next day.

When I arrived, Hope led me to the tree, and Moe was sitting on a rotten limb about 20 feet up. Hope said that Moe was very friendly, I thought that it could be an easy rescue. I set a climbing line above Moe, and started up. During the setup, Moe seemed a bit concerned, and even a little skittish. Moe was currently at the end of her limb, so I tried to reach her limb fairly quickly to cut off any route further up the tree since Moe had been much higher previously. When I reached Moe's limb, Moe decided that she did not want to have anything to do with me, and dropped down to the next limb. She then worked down this limb to another lower branch, and then went far out on that branch. At this point, she was less than 10 ft above the ground. My plan at this point was simply to climb down to her and encourage her to jump. As I was preparing to climb down, Moe took matters into her own paws and jumped the rest of the way to the ground. She ran to the house, and shortly thereafter was enjoying some food and water inside. The video linked below does not show much of Moe as limbs obscured my view of her once she jumped to the lower branches.