Echo’s bogus journey, version 2.0

Echo, if you were not aware, is a strictly-indoor cat.  She protests this, and from time to time she escapes.  On such occasions, she tends to demonstrate her unsuitability for life in the outside world.  Today, alas, was another one of those days.

Last night she escaped the house,  and since it was quite late I decided against trying to chase her down.  This morning, when I called her to come in, I heard her meowing but she did not come to the door.  Following the meows, I eventually looked up and saw her in the neighbor’s tree, probably about 15-20 feet above the roof of their house!

At first, we thought nothing of it.  If she got up, surely she could get down.  But after a few hours, it became evident that she was stuck, and with the Texas sun rising, we realized that a rescue was going to be necessary.

I began by trying a number of simple methods.  I took a bowl of food and water to the base of the tree, and tried to call to her to come down and have some.  No dice.

I climbed part-way into the tree itself, to see if proximity would entice her to come down.  Again, no luck.  It was at this point that I began to realize how steep of a branch she had climbed — if you look at the wider-angle shot above, and follow the branch, you’ll see that it really juts down at probably something like a 70 degree angle.  Once I got high enough, I began to appreciate her dilemma.

The neighbors weren’t home, but since I didn’t know how long they would be away, I decided to go ahead and try climbing up on their roof with our 12′ ladder.  The roof is quite flat for a ways, and the ladder could be placed firmly against the branch where Echo was perched.  I climbed the ladder and got within about eight feet of her, but despite my best efforts waving food and water around, I still couldn’t get her to come to me.   (Going closer to her was also out of the question, since the branch became more narrow and the distance quite great.)

To really get to her, I would need a ladder about twice as long.  I asked our neighbors across the street, but they couldn’t think of anyone with one.  At this point, I figured I was in above my head.  Fortunately, the neighbor’s son (probably a senior in high school, or thereabouts) got home, so I was able to secure permission to call someone to get her down.  I tried calling animal control, but they said “we don’t do cats” and I’d have to call a private rescue company.  I managed to find two phone numbers for such, but, being Saturday, the calls went unanswered.

Back to square one.  But this time, I had an ally.  This seemed to be about the most interesting thing in the neighbor-kid’s day, so we went up onto the roof together.  We didn’t have any great ideas about getting her down, but since Echo was panting a lot and seemed thirsty, we thought we might at least be able to get her some water by throwing a rope over the branch as a make-shift pulley.

As I was getting the rope from my garage, I had an ingenious idea of the variety that no responsible person would allow me to attempt.

I returned to the roof with (a) the rope, and (b) the cat tree.  Our approach can best be described visually, so I have put together this excellent diagram explaining how it was done.  Basically, ladder + cat tree = really damn tall.  The diagram doesn’t quite explain that our arms were above our heads because the ladder was taller than me.

With the top of the cat tree right next to her, Echo made a heroic, death-defying stunt jump onto the top of the cat tree.  We then carefully lowered it to the roof, and I picker her up off the top.

Wow!

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