Honey's Rescue

The Monday of Thanksgiving week I got an email from Honey's owner who told me that Honey had been stuck 65 feet high in a pine tree in their back yard since Friday.  To make matters worse, the owners were leaving on Tuesday morning to leave town for the Holiday.  I got to their house that afternoon (only 1/2 mile down the road from another cat's house who I have rescued twice previously) with less than an hour of sunlight.

Honey was not being very vocal and as I got my line into the tree she went to the very end of the branch she was on.  I climbed up to her level and tried to make friends, but she was in no mood to walk toward me.  I advanced my tie in point so I could limb walk out to her, but the branch was so thin that I could really only get about 10 feet from the trunk - still 10 feet from her position at the end of the branch.

I tried to use my net to prod Honey toward me or to scoop her up, but she preferred to jump to a small tree below her than to come any closer than 4 feet to me.  The tree she jumped to couldn't hold her and she fell all the way to the ground in darkness, pinwheeling through the branches as she fell.  Thankfully her owner had raked a large pile of leaves under the tree in case she fell - and Honey landed on her feet right on the pile.

I think Honey's owner gets the Super-Devoted Cat Mom Award.  I noticed that there were helium balloons in a tree near Honey and off handedly ask if someone just had a birthday. A little sheepishly, the owner said no, but she had tried to use the balloons to deliver food to Honey in the tree.