"Buttermilk" - A difficult Rescue

Executive Summary

Preface: This story has a happy ending, but illustrates the danger to the cat of a stuck-in-tree rescue. Richard from Oxford called me, one of his kitties (Buttermilk) had been stuck five days in a tree. A locally hired rescue attempt only succeeded in scaring the kitty higher up the tree, could I help? When I arrived, Richard led me to the tree, where my heart sank at the sight. Buttermilk was easily 70 feet up a skinny hardwood, that was only climbable for about 30 feet. I decided to try a long traverse from a tall neighboring pine tree. The plan was to traverse as far I could, the skinny tree would bend towards me, and hopefully I could get within grab pole range. I managed to set a traverse rope that was cinched in a loose canopy anchor about 2-3 feet below the kitty (small limbs prevented the cinch from reaching the trunk, and the leaves prevented me from seeing exactly where the rope was in relation to the cat). The neighboring pine was at the top of a small hill, so this helped me set a tie-in point that was a bit above Buttermilk. The attached photo is during the pine tree ascent, I don’t have anything after this as my helmet camera got knocked askew. Richard and I also rigged a large net between the pine tree and the target tree in case Buttermilk fell or jumped during the rescue. The traverse was slow going but I finally got to just within grab pole range – because of the rope angle, I was not going to be able to traverse all of the way over unless I dropped much lower, which would have probably put me too far below Buttermilk when I got there (and would have put too much downward pressure on the traverse rope). I tried a pole grab, but Buttermilk batted at the loop, and slipped down the tree a couple of feet. This is where the strangeness occurred. Buttermilk suddenly started loudly yowling and biting at the small limbs around her. I could not figure out what was going on as much of it was hidden by foliage. At the time, I thought Buttermilk was just angry (I did not realize what this behavior meant until later). Buttermilk was now out of range, so I dropped down a little, and traversed a little further until I was within good pole range. I snagged Buttermilk, and tried to pull her to me, but I finally realized what was causing Buttermilk to yowl – her back left leg had somehow gotten pinned in my traverse rope and I could not pull her loose (I did not try very hard as I did not want to cause further pain to Buttermilk). When I released the pole loop, Buttermilk hung straight down, caught by the snagged leg. I bombed out of the tree as quickly as I could, and pulled on the canopy anchor retrieval line to loosen the traverse rope. This caused Buttermilk to fall; she grabbed on to a couple of limbs on the way down to slow her fall, missed the net (of course), and hit the ground. Buttermilk ran under a nearby shed that she frequents, and while she was running, I could that her back left leg was not working very well. I thought for sure it was broken, or at the very least severely dislocated. My heart was broken at the thought of her being injured. This occurred late on a Friday. On Sunday, Richard was finally able to coax her out from under the shed. He reported that she has no apparent injuries after a careful inspection and is walking normally. I was relieved to say the least. I still don’t exactly understand how Buttermilk’s leg was pinned, perhaps a small limb was also involved and the leg got pinned between the limb and rope, and not between rope and trunk. On reflection, the one thing I could have done differently is immediately aborted the rescue when Buttermilk first started yowling, by recognizing something unusual was happening and that she was in pain. However, it never occurred to me that a cat could get pinned like that – I had to snag Buttermilk to finally realize the situation. So, anyway, now I know and will abort a rescue if the kitty begins acting like it is in pain.