Three Rescues  - Sebastian, jack, Tom

Executive Summary

This post is about three rescues. 

Diann from Flintville TN contacted me about "Sebastian", one of her rescue kitties.  He had been stuck up a tree for about three days and needed help. When I arrived at the rural location on a Sunday morning, Diann led me to a wooded area just behind the house where Sebastian was hanging out at about 25 ft at a fork. It looked easy, so I put a rope in a neighboring stem so as to not disturb him, and went up.  Of course, as I climbed, Sebastian retreated all the way out on his limb about 15 feet away and would not come back. So, I climbed back down, installed the rope closer to him, then went back up. This time, Sebastian was only about five feet, and started kneading his paws as Diann sweet talked him. I opened a can of wet cat food and that sealed the deal - I was his friend! He walked right to me and went into the bag with no problem. Back on the ground, Diann reunited Sebastian with his other kitty family members, and all was good.  Diann, thanks for your generous donation, I applied it to some Vet bills for a kitty that I had rescued a while back.

On Wednesday night, I got a text from Ryan Handran, the cat saving hero in Starkville MS who I recently trained with to get him up to speed on tree climbing.  He had attempted a rescue in Tupelo MS but  the kitty (Jack) went too high, and it was going to take a tag-team approach.  I was free on Friday, so  I met Ryan at Teresa's (Jack's person) home at 9:30 am.  I was hoping that Jack had worked down the tree a bit, but NOPE - Jack was on a thin branch at about 70 ft.  This was going to be a gut-wrencher.  There was a tie-in point at about 65 ft, but there was no way to get close enough for a hand-grab -- it going to have to be a pole-grab.  We installed a large net underneath Jack in case he fell, and I started climbing. When I got to the tie-in point, I put a lanyard on a neighboring vertical stem to make me feel better, since the tree was swaying in the wind like a sailing mast at sea, which was SCARY.   I pulled up the grab-pole and handled net, told Ryan to get ready, and went for the grab.  I got the noose around Jack's body fairly easily, and pulled him off the limb - THEN THE FIGHT BEGAN.  Jack was strong kitty and I had trouble stuffing him into the net - he kept spreading his legs, holding  to the rim of the net, and refused to be pushed in. I relaxed a minute, and Jack used that opportunity to jump from the net to a neighboring limb. I dragged him off that limb and back to the net. At that point, the adrenaline rush was tiring me, so I yelled at Ryan that I was resting a minute. I looked down at Ryan to check if I could just lower the pole, then looked back at the net.  WUT!  Jack had slipped out of the noose, and was now just hanging onto the net opening!  I yelled a few involuntary cuss words, pulled the net up, and then shook it really hard since Jack was over the opening - Jack lost his grip and fell into the bottom of the net.  WHEW.  I lowered Jack+Net to Ryan, and then came down.  There is no video of the epic struggle as I forgot my helmet cam.  Teresa was filming with her phone, but during the drama, forgot she was filming and the camera pointed elsewhere.  Teresa took Jack inside and we all agreed that we should never meet like this again!

During Jack's rescue, we had another call, this one from Nancy, about 'Tom', a kitty that had gotten stuck that morning and was about 25 minutes away.  On arrival, Nancy led me to the tree where  Tom was only about 20 feet up. I shot a throw bag to about 40 ft, which Ryan then used to start pulling up the rope.  When Tom saw the rope coming up,  he decided to come down the tree and Robbie (Nancy's husband)  grabbed him.  It was about a 30 minute rescue, the exact opposite in difficulty of Jack's rescue!