Just curious. Assuming a cat is not physically caught in a tree, but is simply too scared to come down, will the cat eventually come down, or can it stay up so long it will die of starvation up in the tree?
Ever see a cat skeleton in a tree?
I’m guessing they get down eventually.
It’s not just a matter of them being scared-- their claws are a lot better at climbing than decending a tree, so it’s entirely possible that they could climb up a tree and not be able to get down it. I think they’d probably try it and fall before they starved.
Otherwise they usually will come down, but it might be days and days before they try it.
I had a boyfriend who told me that exact thing about never seeing a cat skeleton in a tree. They will come down when they get hungry, he said. They got up there and they will be able to get back down.
So when HIS cat got on the roof of the apartment house next door, he left her up there. Meowing, more piteously by the day.
He kept saying, “One more day and she’ll figure it out.” He figured that, the roof being flat, there might be puddles of water up there for her to drink.
On the fourth or fifth day he and I climbed up the fire escape. I held on to him while he stood on the narrow metal rail around the fire escape, three stories off the ground, adn called the cat. She came to him. She was weak, but not so weak she didn’t grab onto the roof when he tried to rescue her. I kept telling him, “Grab her by the scruff of the neck,” and eventually he did, and we got her down, whereupon she became an indoor cat for the rest of her life.
I should mention, this guy was afraid of heights. I’m not, and I offered to go up on the roof. But I would have had to do more climbing, since he was about a foot taller than I was. He was shaking from the time we started climbing the fire escape. But I had to admire the way he loved his cat.
I also weighed considerably less, and would not have bent the railing on the neighbors’ fire escape. But then, they probably would have had the fire department to get ME down, since like a cat I’ve been known to go up things that were a lot harder to descend.
I don’t think some of them ever will come down. We had a cat that climbed a really tall tree once and it stayed there for days getting more and more panicked. We eventually called the fire department and my father opted to take out a 30.06 rifle and shoot the branch it was on down. It worked but the cat got impaled by debris and fell straight to the ground with a THUMP. It was still alive but died of internal injuries about a week later at the vet’s office. I felt horrible at the time but there was nothing else that could really be done. It had already gone about 4 days without water and showed no signs of ever coming down. It was a very tall and skinny pine tree so I am not even sure she knew how to get down on her own. The skeletons of the really stubborn cats probably just fall to the ground on their own and taken away quickly by predators and vermin just like all dead animals do.
Huh? What about the fire department?
Those bastards can take minutes to show up.
their claws are like hooks which makes it very easy for them to go up any tree headfirst while being useless vice versa. their only option is to either jump down or slowly reverse down while hugging the tree. depending on the tree, neither of these are palatable once the adrenaline is gone.
It was a rural area and there were no ladder trucks around that could reach that high. The plan was to cause a branch failure so that the cat could drop on its own and be caught on the way down or get scared and run down by itself. It wasn’t the most well thought-out plan but it was the only thing we had left after several days of waiting. It didn’t work but I am convinced that she would have stayed up high in a skinny tree from it until she died anyway. Cats really can get so high up in trees that they don’t have a good way to get down.
My parents’ cat used to run down the tree face-first, and jump off at the last second.
My outdoor cats did that too, but the highest they ever got up in the tree was about 20-25 feet…never any higher than I could climb at 10 years old.
Oh, thanks for the clarification. I read your post like “Yeah, well, help’s on the way so, in the meantime, let’s see what I can do with this gun here …”
Sorry about your cat. That sucks.
If you find yourself in such a situation, you may also consider contacting your local tree service, particularly a small local one that could use some goodwill publicity. If you have to pay for a climber to go up a dangerous tree, it will be costly, but my friend has rescued pets from trees before at no cost just for the publicity.
Shagnasty, when I read your reply that said
:eek: at first I thought he might be deciding on a seriously drastic course of action. (though it would explain the absence of cat skeletons in trees).
I was glad to read the rest of the sentence to see that he was attempting a humane approach. (I wish that story had a happier ending though).
He shot a 30.06 up in the air? :eek:
I wonder where the bullet landed?
and what if there are no damsels in distress
what if I knew that and I called your bluff?
don’t you think every kitten figures out how to get down
whether or not you ever show up
–Ani DiFranco
I had a cat that would ‘spiral’ down a tree till she got close enough to run down and jump off. I have never seen a cat back down except very short distances, just to get into position to jump better.
One of my cats uses this method to get off of me when he decides he’s had enough cuddling. He’d probably do the same if stuck in a tree. He’s also blindingly stupid, however, so self-preservation may not be an issue in his crazy little mind.
I’ve lived with about a dozen cats, and all of them, even the one with only two functional legs, have been perfectly capable of going both up and down trees whenever it suited them. Maybe some cats are too far removed from their instincts or their sense to figure it out, but they’re certainly physically capable of getting down.