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Cat stuck in tree for 17 days survived hail storm before Arkansas rescue, owner says

Sparkles the cat left the ground on March 14. She wouldn’t set foot on grass again for another 17 days.

Beverly McIntosh first noticed her cat had scaled a tree outside her Jonesboro, Arkansas, home that night, but it was too dark for her to fish Sparkles out of the tree.

The next morning, she grabbed a ladder and tried again.

“I couldn’t reach her the way that the tree was that she picked,” McIntosh told McClatchy News. “I needed help, someone to hold the ladder.”

Sparkles is pictured with McIntosh’s son a couple days before she got stuck in the tree.
Sparkles is pictured with McIntosh’s son a couple days before she got stuck in the tree.

So McIntosh took some photos to send to her friends, pleading with them to help get Sparkles, a rescue, down from the towering tree. Five people stopped by to help, but to no avail.

A few days later, McIntosh really started to worry.

“My friend thought that she was dead because she quit crying,” McIntosh said, adding that Sparkles had been mewling the entire time she was in the tree.

McIntosh said she called every service she could think of — the police, the fire department, the humane society, tree removal services — but no one would help, assuring her that the cat was taunting her and would come down eventually.

“They told me they didn’t really believe that it was up in the tree that long,” McIntosh said. “They’d say, it’s teasing you, she’s coming down and eating. I would put food down there, but she wasn’t eating it.”

Finally, a veterinarian passed along Angie Heringer’s phone number to McIntosh. Heringer is executive director of ARC Angels 4 Animals, a volunteer rescue group in Jonesboro.

“We try to connect people with help,” she told McClatchy. “People need hope and people need help.”

At that point, McIntosh said Sparkles had endured hail and a rain storm during her more than two weeks in the tree — something Heringer had a hard time wrapping her mind around.

“I thought no, surely not. How could that cat survive?” Heringer said. “That’s what we hear a lot, we’ve tried everybody, can you help?”

But when she learned Sparkles had stopped meowing, she booked it to McIntosh’s home. The pair eventually got Sparkles meowing again, but Heringer said a rescue would be especially tricky because of how the tree was situated — it was sandwiched by power lines and a large ditch and the ground was soft from rain.

Heringer called in a friend who tried to rescue Sparkles using a deer stand, but she kept scurrying farther up the tree when he’d get close. Finally, after several failed phone calls, Heringer got in touch with the owner of a tree trimming service who said he could help.

Minutes later, Clint Williams from Williams Tree Service arrived and estimated Sparkles was about 65 feet up.

“She got to the tip-top, this tree was swaying, it was high,” McIntosh said.

Williams scaled the tree, but as he neared, events took a tense turn — Sparkles scampered out onto a limb.

“We just knew the cat was going to jump,” Heringer said.

But Williams was able to grab the cat, throw a rope over the tree limb and rappel down, safely delivering Sparkles back into McIntosh’s arms 17 days after it all began.

Heringer said the cat had lost a significant portion of her body weight. She and the ARC team monitored Sparkles for the next few days, cautioning McIntosh against feeding her too much too quickly. But Heringer said Sparkles was completely fine.

Sparkles enjoys her first meal after her rescue.
Sparkles enjoys her first meal after her rescue.

McIntosh said she’s forever grateful to Heringer for the help.

“It was a really heartfelt story,” McIntosh said. “For people who don’t know you to go to that length to help you., it was amazing. At first no one did, and then to find out someone would.”

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