Cat stuck in tree dies and is taken by a vulture

This is a very rare example of a cat stuck up a tree who dies after six days and is then taken away by a vulture. That is what the people who were involved in the rescue believe happened. All the rescues sadly failed. It is said that this was a young cat.

Cat stuck in tree dies

All the stories about cats stuck in trees that I have read have ended successfully. Until now I have never heard of a cat dying in a tree.

The location is Boyes Hot Springs in Sonoma County, USA. The cat was stuck more than 50 feet up a redwood tree. He cried incessantly.

A lady who lives on the road where the tree is situated posted information about the cat on a neighborhood website and there was a good response with many suggestions. As it happens no one could help.

The Sonoma Valley Fire and Rescue Authority were unable to help because there are powerlines next to the tree.

In the end two brave local residents who had experience in tree climbing tried to rescue the cat.

The first was Roy Tennant. He used climbing equipment to get to 50 feet up at which point he turned back because the tree trunk was too thin and the ascent was becoming too dangerous. Also he could not see or hear the cat.

Next to try was another local, Steve Millosovich. His wife is a committed animal rescuer. Steve has good experience of climbing trees because he had worked as a tree surgeon (arborist).

Steve Millosovich tries to rescue cat stuck up tree

He tried until dark to reach the cat. He got to within a few feet and attempted to tempt the cat with turkey but at this point the tree trunk was thin and the cat became frightened and climbed higher.

On Jan 2nd the cat was still crying but when dawn arrived the next day there was silence while a vulture was perched on a nearby power line.

No one saw the vulture take the cat. It has been presumed to have happened. The cat was stuck for six days without food or water. Cats are great survivors and it is not clear is this cat died of lack of water. There are stories of cats going without water for longer and surviving. Cats trapped in containers for a month have survived but it is believed that these cats have licked condensation from the insides of the container.

I suppose it is possible the cat became weak and the vulture took him away – very sad ending. It confirms to me that people are correct to try and rescue cats stuck in trees rather than waiting for the cat to come dowm of his own accord. It is peculiar that the domestic cat is able to misjudge his climbing ability to such devastating effect. You’d think the cat would instinctively kown his limits.

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A vulture will not take a live cat. Nor will a cat die of starvation nor dehydration in so short of a time. It must have climbed down on its own, as they all do. The “vulture” portion was either fictional for attention-seeking or just a coincidental sighting.

I got to wondering about the usual reply to those scenarios, “Ever see a dead cat in a tree?”

Surely, Google-Images, with its billions of selfies and in-peril cat-photos MUST have tomes and tomes of dead-cats in trees to PROVE that millions of cats die that way (by natural selection).

I put “dead cat in a tree” into Google Image search.

I got a whopping 185 hits out of the billions of photos available through them. To test photo availability, I did a search just on the letter A. I get 7,310,000,000, 7.31 Billion. The word “the” returns a slightly lower hit-count. Cat OR Cats returns 521,000,000 hits.

Only TWO appear to be actual dead-cats fatally stuck in a tree. And we don’t know if they got there on their own or were already dead and carried there as an owl’s, hawk’s, or eagle’s cache — one that might have died and never returned to eat. Or the cat just found dead on a road and put there for the mythical photo-op. Or maybe the tree was even struck by lightning while it was there. (A hawk died that way in a tree here one year.)

With the millions of cats climbing trees and getting stuck each year, I’d say the statistics of needing to save any cat from any tree is near absolute zero. What’s 2 out of 521,000,000 cat-photos, statistically speaking. And we have no proof it even died from that natural-selection behavior.

Interestingly, the most photos are from a TNR fan who was arrested for hanging all his dead TNR-cats in a tree. Huge brouhaha over that a few years ago, HSUS & ACA offering enormous ($25K) rewards to find the person killing cats by bludgeoning them to death with the found-nearby baseball-bat and pipe, and hanging them in a tree. They even paid for a huge billboard-ad to find the culprit. Only to find out it was a cat-lover that was scraping his roadkill TNR cats off the pavement after having fed them his whole life, putting his death-by-attrition TNR cats in bags and hanging them in a tree to keep animals from desecrating his dead TNR cats.

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Comments

Cat stuck in tree dies and is taken by a vulture — 8 Comments

S. Perkins on January 7, 2017 at 8:54 pm said:
“Noel Baley, who lives nearby, didn’t know Carcamo by name but recognized his photo, calling him the “pied piper” of feral cats in the neighborhood. He said Carcamo was friendly and often seen feeding cats on the street. … According to the criminal complaint, the superintendent of 25 Overlook Terrace, the building where Carcamo lives, told authorities the 60-year-old had “many” cats in his apartment and that he had seen him Carcamo, on multiple occasions, picking up dead cats from around the building, placing them in individual plastic bags and hanging them from a tree nearby.”
http : / / www . usatoday . com / story / news / nation / 2014 / 11 / 18 / cat-massacre-arrest / 19230375 /
Your logic about HSUS and all the others offering a reward is so impeccable, isn’t it. All those organizations frequently offer rewards as a tax write-offs and for the press it gets them for even more donations to line their own pockets. Knowing full-well that they never have to ever pay-out any rewards — ever. It’s all part of the money-making scam they use by exploiting all the suffering cats that they cause by promoting free-roaming cats. Even some of your own regulars here torture cats to death and then parade them in the media for donations for themselves. One of them even buying a new car on one of their cat-torturing money-making scams and then complaining later publicly they couldn’t afford to take their new dying cat to a vet and then started-up a new donation scam. But you won’t print the proof of that, lest everyone see just what kind of company you that keep and support. It would make you look just as disgusting. But you already know that, that’s why you refused to print any of it last time.
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Dee (Florida) on January 7, 2017 at 8:14 pm said:
I find it shameful that no one or any organization couldn’t save this cat.
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S. Perkins on January 7, 2017 at 12:40 am said:
A vulture will not take a live cat. Nor will a cat die of starvation nor dehydration in so short of a time. It must have climbed down on its own, as they all do. The “vulture” portion was either fictional for attention-seeking or just a coincidental sighting.
I got to wondering about the usual reply to those scenarios, “Ever see a dead cat in a tree?”
Surely, Google-Images, with its billions of selfies and in-peril cat-photos MUST have tomes and tomes of dead-cats in trees to PROVE that millions of cats die that way (by natural selection).
I put “dead cat in a tree” into Google Image search.
I got a whopping 185 hits out of the billions of photos available through them. To test photo availability, I did a search just on the letter A. I get 7,310,000,000, 7.31 Billion. The word “the” returns a slightly lower hit-count. Cat OR Cats returns 521,000,000 hits.
Only TWO appear to be actual dead-cats fatally stuck in a tree. And we don’t know if they got there on their own or were already dead and carried there as an owl’s, hawk’s, or eagle’s cache — one that might have died and never returned to eat. Or the cat just found dead on a road and put there for the mythical photo-op. Or maybe the tree was even struck by lightning while it was there. (A hawk died that way in a tree here one year.)
With the millions of cats climbing trees and getting stuck each year, I’d say the statistics of needing to save any cat from any tree is near absolute zero. What’s 2 out of 521,000,000 cat-photos, statistically speaking. And we have no proof it even died from that natural-selection behavior.
Interestingly, the most photos are from a TNR fan who was arrested for hanging all his dead TNR-cats in a tree. Huge brouhaha over that a few years ago, HSUS & ACA offering enormous ($25K) rewards to find the person killing cats by bludgeoning them to death with the found-nearby baseball-bat and pipe, and hanging them in a tree. They even paid for a huge billboard-ad to find the culprit. Only to find out it was a cat-lover that was scraping his roadkill TNR cats off the pavement after having fed them his whole life, putting his death-by-attrition TNR cats in bags and hanging them in a tree to keep animals from desecrating his dead TNR cats.
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- Michael Broad on January 7, 2017 at 9:58 am said:
  Thanks Sue for a great comment. Much appreciated and I agree with a lot of what you say. I’ll comment further later today.
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- Michael Broad on January 7, 2017 at 2:56 pm said:
  Hi S Perkins, I have now had time to read your comment fully and in detail and it is not as good as I thought it was. In fact I think you could be Woody (a troll). I agree that cats don’t die when stuck in trees but it is possible and in my opinion the story is plausible although unlikely.
  As for the cat murders and being hung up in black bags, I remember that well and wrote about it. Where did you get the information that this was a person hanging up road kill? That must be wrong and it seems like a malicious comment. The bodies were checked out and HSUS would not have offered a reward if there were doubts about the cause of death of these cats and kittens.
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- Dee (Florida) on January 7, 2017 at 8:17 pm said:
  Sorry, Michael…
  Jim, Su-k out my -ss! And, have a meal.
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  - S. Perkins on January 7, 2017 at 9:20 pm said:
    The only difference between Yonkers’ Rene Carcamo TNR cats and yours are that he took the time to find all the dead ones and hung them in trees where people could see what happens to the cats of people like you. He actually cared how his cats died and what happened to them afterward — unlike you.
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Albert Schepis on January 6, 2017 at 7:37 pm said:
Oh man…. Yeah, this is also the first time I’ve read of one dying. I always suspected it could happen, especially the more tired, hungry, thirsty and scared they get. It is a real emergency! So, so sad.
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