Jeffrey Collins tells about a kitten caught up in a tree, and wonders what to do - now the kitten needs a home.
Here's how to get a cat out of a tree - call it to dinner (it helps if the cat knows the routine in advance though).
Amy and I have a couple of cats, used to have four (kindof like the Brady Bunch with cats, she had two, I had two, and we didn't want to give any of them up when we got married.)
General Cat, who is now 15 years old, had a tree experience when he was a kitten, about seven months old. A big old bully cat lived in the neighborhood, and one day he chased General Kitten, so that poor little General rushed up a tree about fifteen feet high and out onto a tree branch. The catch now is that it was a cold drizzly day in December and the tree branches were slippery. General lost his footing and wound up hanging from a tree branch like a sloth. I was so sure he was going to fall. He would have landed on his feet of course, but I was still thinking he could break a leg or worse, so I was really put out, looking for a ladder or anything I could get, but nothing was around (I lived in an apartment back then). I don't know how he did it, but he hung on and even got back on top of that branch. It was hard to get him down, but he did make down just about dinnertime. General did get his revenge later in life; he grew up to be a pretty good sized cat himself.
General's sister, Princess, who died in 2001, was an expert tree-climber. She was so small and light, even as an adult cat, that she could walk out and maneuver on the smallest tree limbs. On the tree behind our house, she used to walk way out on the branches till they bent close to the ground, and jump just the few remaining feet to the ground. No inching down backwards on tree trunks for her. She was also an excellent leaper, and once caught a bird about four feet off the ground as it was taking off out of a bush.