By Susanna Ray
Herald Writer
STANWOOD — A Kayak Point kitty’s Christmas tale had a happy ending, thanks to a "tree-top angel" from Lake Stevens.
Racheal Ogan’s 8-month-old tabby, Sheriah, apparently snuck out of the house Friday when Ogan left on a trip to Portland, Ore. Ogan came home early when she heard Sheriah was missing, and finally found her around midnight Sunday.
"I heard her crying and went looking for her, and she was in the neighbor’s yard up a tree, with three dogs at the foot of the tree," she said.
The fire department told Ogan that if Sheriah was still in the tree on Christmas, they’d come out and rescue her.
But on Christmas morning, Ogan discovered that the frightened cat had climbed even farther up the huge maple tree — well out of reach of the firetruck’s ladders.
With her kitten starting a fifth day without food and water, Ogan said she was so distraught by its suffering that she started talking about borrowing a gun to shoot it and put it out of its misery.
Thankfully, a neighbor had a better idea and called WingOver Farm, an animal sanctuary in Arlington.
Even though it was Christmas, or perhaps because it was Christmas, volunteer Brian Berg immediately went to work finding a savior for the cat.
"It had been hollering, and then it just went down to a feeble meow," Berg said, adding that he was particularly worried about freezing overnight temperatures dropping still lower. "That would have been the end of it. The cat would have died there."
Enter Bill Eylander of Bill’s Tree Topping and Removal in Lake Stevens. His wife is an animal lover who never lets him ignore a cat’s cry for help, Eylander said. So when he got the call as she was making Christmas dinner, he knew she’d rather delay dinner than leave the cat out in the cold, and he got his belt and spurs and headed to Stanwood with his nephew, Bryan.
"I thought, it’s Christmas, no one will come out here. But he came out and in three to five minutes scaled the tree and brought her down," Ogan said. "And I was so happy, because I’ve been miserable."
Eylander said he found Sheriah about 60 feet up the tree.
"I just call him the angel. The tree-top angel," Ogan said. "And that’s the story of my Christmas kitty."
You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 425-339-3439
or send e-mail to ray@heraldnet.com.
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