Porter, Maine - Local arborist, Nick Donovan, received a call on Tuesday that he wasn't expecting. Kim Eastman's cat, Clyde, was stuck in a tree again.
"This was Clyde's second time in a tree! First time it was in the middle of a 90-degree heatwave and he was up in a tree 7 days! He needed to be helped that time too! I couldn't let him stay in that tree with the weather as cold as it is. " - Kim
She had reached out to the community on Facebook, tried the Fire Department, Town Hall, and Animal Control, and wasn't having any luck. Finally, she reached out to the owner of Donovan Tree Removal, LLC in Porter, Nick Donovan.
"It's not something that we normally offer as a tree service, but she just happened to catch me while I was finishing up work on the truck. Otherwise, I probably would have been up in a tree myself." Nick grabbed his climbing gear and headed over to help.
While she waited, she made preparations including, borrowing a backpack for Nick to carry Clyde down in and placing cushions under the tree. "It's so rocky all around my place I was afraid Clyde was going to get hurt. I had every blanket in the house on top of every rock out there to give a little cushion, just in case."
As Nick started to climb the tree to get Clyde, the cat had other ideas. He headed up higher and further out. Finally, after carefully negotiating the thinning branches, Clyde was down. "Nick, the tree guy got him off the limb and my neighbor Sally and I caught him like a couple of professionals in a blanket"!
Although it isn't part of their usual tree services, Donovan says he is glad he was able to help. "If it were my pet I would be worried about it being stuck. I'm happy we were able to get the cat down."
Kim was happy, too. "Nick was a professional in every sense of the word. I'm calling him for any other tree troubles, he is our hero!"
So, why can some cats go up but not climb down? According to www.catrescueguy.com
"Actually, they can climb down, but the problem is that many cats just don’t know how. To climb down, they must go down backward, that is, butt-first. Some cats know how to do that, but for others, it is simply not instinctive. Instead, they try to go down in a more natural head-first manner, and there is no way they can adequately hold themselves up with their upward-pointing claws that way. Sadly, many cats either can't figure out how to go down backward or are too afraid to do it, and they are truly stuck."
Whether or not Clyde learned his lesson remains to be seen. But, for now, he is comfortably back on the ground and leaving the tree climbing to the professionals.
