Lizzie’s savior brings her down again
Published: June 1, 2006
It amuses Jo Ann Dwyer that her daughter’s cat, Lizzie, joined the family as a rescue cat, adopted from Cat Connection.
“I’m still rescuing her. When does the rescuing end?” she said, laughing, a few days after the 7-month-old kitten was once again carried out of a high tree in the back yard of their Ocean Pines home.
Lizzie, who the family would like to keep as an indoor cat, has a habit of following the family’s other indoor-outdoor cats out the door, then climbing the tree. On Saturday, May 20, she went up for the fifth time in two months.
“I’ve lost count. I know it’s at least four times,” said Jeremy Bostick, the good-natured tree climber from Eastern Shore Tree Removal in Berlin, who describes himself as Lizzie’s savior.
“I think she knows me like from her visual perspective. I get out of the truck and start walking toward the tree and she starts meowing like you would not believe, really loud. I do not know what she thinks of me. She probably thinks I’m her savior,” he said, laughing.
“On the way down the tree, I’m getting clawed to death. That’s because I couldn’t come down the tree fast enough,” Bostick said.
He wore shoes with cleats to climb the tree, he said, and used a safety harness, rope around the tree to sling over each limb as he ascended and a separate climbing rope.
When he got close enough to Lizzie, who was on branches about 75 feet in the air, he called to her and she went to him, but didn’t like the quick descent. Bostick said he comes down a tree 15 feet per second.
“She knew she’d have all four on the ground again,” he said.
“I didn’t mind going up to get her. I don’t ever mind that. It’s giving back. I have cats and I love my cats and I hope if I wasn’t around somebody would do it for me,” he said.
“I’m sure I’ll get many calls. Maybe this will encourage people to keep the little kitties inside,” he said.
At the urging of her 12-year-old daughter Jaimie, Dwyer called Bostick again because, she said, four days and three nights knowing Lizzie was stuck in the tree “was the longest I could hold out.”
She tried misting the cat with a hose to nudge it down, but Lizzie only went higher. Dwyer wet the tree trunk so the cat could lick the water and not become dehydrated, and noticed she was trying to eat the bark.
When she was on the ground again, Lizzie went in the house and, Dwyer said, the first stop was her litter box.
“Then she just chowed down,” she said, adding, “She’s so sweet. She’s such a sweet cat.”
Dwyer has spent $250 for Bostick’s tree climbing services, since she was denied help from the Ocean Pines Volunteer Fire Department.
“We don’t do it any more. I know it’s the traditional thing to do but we stopped four or five years ago,” said Jackie Carey, president of the fire department.
“The reason being, it’s a very expensive piece of equipment, priceless man power and the last two or three cats we got out of trees ran right back up the tree again,” she said.
“We used to but after the three or four cats in a row that we got down looked around then ran back up the tree we stopped. The key is to ignore them,” Carey said.
Firefighters tell cat owners to put a bowl of food down and ignore the cat and he will come down, she said.
But Dwyer was disappointed that the fire department didn’t help.
“I was very upset because, now, wait a minute. It’s not like our fire department is that busy,” she said.
Lizzie, who was in the tree this time four days and three nights, made a mournful cry that could be heard a block away.
“I know. It’s awful. It’s heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking,” Carey said.
“But we have to consider the cost of the equipment, risking our people and, as I say, the gratitude shown by the cat,” she said.
A couple firefighters were bitten by cats during rescue attempts.
“We never held it against the cat but then you have another issue,” Carey said, adding cat owners can call a tree service if the animal doesn’t descend on its own.
Glenn Duffy, president of the Ocean Pines Board of Directors, said he didn’t know the community’s policy for having the fire department rescue cats from trees.
“If a person is in a tree, that’s one thing, but cats usually have the ability to come down,” he said.
Police Chief Dave Massey said the police and fire departments “are limited with the things we can do.”
“No problem, we are here to help. We even had an iguana up a tree once. There are certain things we can do. But we’re not going up a 30-foot tree,” he said.
The neighboring Berlin Volunteer Fire Department policy is to help if possible.
“We don’t have a policy not to do it, but once in a while we won’t because of location or something,” said a firefighter who asked not to be identified.
“But like I told one lady, when’s the last time you saw a cat skeleton in a tree? They come down sooner or later.”
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