On Thursday Sascha decided that Jake, one of our feral cats, should go up a tree. Only it turns out that Jake belongs to the small percentage of the cat population that are terrified of heights and cannot get themselves down. We tried everything to coax him down, but after 18 hours we realised we had a bit of a problem. Poor Jake was yelling blue murder and shaking like a leaf and due to the extreme heat was very dehydrated.
What to do? He was quite high up a huge walnut tree and as he is only just coming to term with human company, he wasn't a candidate for someone to go up and get him. I made a few phone calls and I have say, this didn't restore my faith in the human population. No one had any words of advice, but seemed to think it was amusing that he couldn't get down. One person even suggested he had no intelligence!!! Fuelled by this negativity, I was determined that Jake was getting safely out of that tree!
Enter Stevie the tractor and my friend Dani from National Service Dogs. Its amazing what you can do with a front end loader and a bucket, a few bales of hay and a can of tuna! Dani came up with the idea of stacking the bales in the bucket of the tractor to make the jump shorter. We managed to get the bucket within about 2 feet of Jake, but he still needed to get the confidence to move from his spot.
As we waited to see if Jake would take this leap of faith so to speak, a small furry hero came into the picture. Big Squiggles, not the most athletic or adventurous cat at BMM, pulled himself up the tree and leaped into the bucket of the tractor!! He showed Jake where the food was and didn't eat any of it (how many cats would leave tuna??) and then climbed back down the tree! Jake finally found the courage to jump and then allowed me to start the tractor and lower the bucket with him in it. It was quite the remarkable sight!
Jake has fully recovered from his ordeal and has turned into quite the cuddle bug. Squiggles is still basking in the glory of being a hero and thoroughly enjoyed the tuna he got to say thank you:)
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