Tree climber assists in cat rescue

TOLEDO – After noticing one of her eight cats didn’t come running for food, Alexandria Harris became worried. 

“They love food, so I kind of figured something was wrong,” she said. Zeroing in on a faint meow, Harris tracked the kitten’s voice to her front yard. “I looked up and she was in the tree.”

High up a sturdy, “funky” tree, with power lines running through it, was her small sandy-orange, long-haired, six-month-old kitten named Spice.

“It was a really distressing meow … a meow that would really make you want to cry. Like, she’s so close but so far away,” said Harris.

Harris, confident Spice was tricked up the tree by a squirrel, said this wasn’t the first time one of her cats went up that tree. A while ago, when she spotted another one her cats up in the tree, Harris said she was unsure of what to do so she called the fire department and half a dozen arborists. 

“I also called 911, and they said, ‘Nope…we don’t do that anymore.’” Fortunately, the black cat came down on his own, but Spice, maybe because of youth, obstinacy or size, wasn’t budging.

Harris then remembered seeing a tree climber on TV who saved cats in his spare time. So, she searched Facebook and found Duane Hook, a Columbus-based tree climber with a side gig of rescuing cats from trees.

“And I was so happy,” Harris exclaimed.

The dramatic rescue

When Hook contacted her, Spice had already been in the tree for three nights, so on Dec. 7 he made the 2.5-hour trek to West Toledo to get Spice out of the cold. With a GoPro camera mounted on his climbing helmet to broadcast Spice’s rescue, he got to work.

During a phone interview with the Toledo Free Press, Hook recounted how the rescue unfolded, and that his first thought was the rescue would be “a piece of cake.

“I can drive up there, get this cat, take off and go.’” He said he was eager to get to a nature preserve later that afternoon but things didn’t go as smoothly as he had anticipated.

In the TikTok video, you can watch Hook easily scale the tree, but then Spice fled into a hole in the tree. When Hook tried to befriend and coax the kitten into his arms with a treat, Spice displayed a bit of attitude, taking the opportunity to *whap!* the treat out of his hand. Then a lot of hissing ensued.

“Like I said, you never know what you’re going to get into with these cats,” Hook jokes in the video.

“I went through all of this deliberation in my head,” he recalls. “But while I was doing that, I told Alexandria, ‘I’m not going to get her out of the hole. She is spicy, that’s for sure. This cat’s absolutely not going to let me get it. I mean, I’m not saying I can’t get it, but it’s not going to let me get it.’”

Generally, for situations like this, Hook said he uses animal handling gloves, but he was also considering using an elevator method to raise a platform up for the cat to walk onto. But then Harris mentioned that she wished she could get up there. “She would let me [get her].’”

And with that, up the tree Harris went.

“I stuck my foot in my mouth,” Harris admitted during the interview at the Toledo Free Press newsroom, revealing she had a fear of heights, a fear that, in some situations in the past had left her dizzy. 

But Hook didn’t know about Harris’ acrophobia, and “I didn’t tell him.”

So, as Harris zoned in on her kitten, Hook geared her up with a harness and safety rope and propped up a ladder for her to climb.

“I prayed and went on up,” she said. “Her life was dependent on it because it was cold and the nighttime was coming.”

Reaching into the hole, Harris fished for the kitten, pulled it out by its front paws and saved Spice.

Hook said that “to be there, and be able to facilitate her [Harris] doing this safely, and to just watch her do this, was better than me doing it.

“To see this woman get this kind of praise, and to have people see her do this, and for her to be able to feel that pride of doing it herself. To me, that’s way better than bagging another cat,” he said. 

Of course, the entire dramatic rescue was posted on Hook’s TikTok page, which boasts the tagline: Bagging cats since 2010. I do this free of charge in my spare time. Central Ohio. His TikTok page has gained almost half-a-million followers.

Hook said that over 70 percent of cats climb down on their own within the first 48 hours, which is always the best outcome. But when they don’t, that’s when he comes to the rescue.

Comments on Hook’s TikTok page praise Harris for taking care of business. The top comment, out of 3,500 comments, had 16.4K likes:

Another top comment had 15K likes:

“I just wanted her to be home and safe, and hopefully she learned her lesson,” Harris said as she held Spice inside the Free Press office. “She hasn’t been over by that tree. She used to go stand over there and then rub her claws up against it. I guess that was enough for her.”

A love of climbing

Hook said his love of nature and climbing introduced him to a community of tree climbing nerds, and through that community he was added to a directory of climbers who help save cats. 

His first rescue, made back in 2010, was so easy that he never considered a cat in a tree might give him trouble. But with experience he’s since learned that “all cats are psychos in their own way.” 

After hundreds and hundreds of rescues, Hook compiled a short list of things he learned to do before attempting to rescue a cat out of a tree. 

These are his rules:

1. Avoid placing a ladder in the tree. It often scares cats higher up, and ladders can cause further complications depending on where the cat moves, weather, and how sturdy the ladder supports are. 
   
2. Do not put food at the tree’s base. Food can attract scavengers and frighten the cat further. 
   
3. Ensure dogs are kept away from the area around the tree so the cat can feel safe. 
   
4. Stand at the base of the tree trunk and call for the cat, instead of being at a more direct line of sight to the cat. The cat will likely follow the sound, which may lead them into a more precarious limb of the tree if the caller is away from the trunk.
    
5. If the cat has been in a tree overnight, it may be time to get help.

After an unfortunate situation with a cat in a pine tree, Hook said he now waits 48 hours before attempting a rescue. The extra time gives more courageous cats an opportunity to jump out of trees on their own. 

Hook, an engineer at a brewery in Columbus, rescues cats on a volunteer basis and receives donations to cover travel costs. He also volunteers with the Ohio Wildlife Center, and rescues birds and other injured animals from trees.

Throughout the whole debacle, Harris said she was incredibly grateful for Hook’s help. She said Spice is adapting well at home, eating and drinking regularly, but staying away from the tree.