this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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Do cats actually get stuck in trees or are they just up there chilling for some alone time until we swoop in and ruin it.
Some have distressed meowing, which we interpret as stuck. My history is that they are sometimes scared to get down, but when they feel like they have no choice, they will come down unscathed. So, their skills can surpass their confidence in getting down safely in some cases. That said, I've only experienced this with 5-7 cats, which is far from conclusive.
I always heard they couldn't climb backwards because their claws and non-rotating paws (like squirrels can rotate their lil grabbies and climb any direction) but after seeing my brain damaged cat climb backwards down a floor-to-ceiling cat tree I now know that to be false.
Well, climbing down facing down and climbing down facing other directions may be the difference there. I've never seen them face down when climbing down, but I have seen them face a lot of other directions. It may require ripping of the trees or there claws to make it happen. I'm no expert, though.
My parents' orange used to try climbing down face down and we had to help him get unstuck twice because of this, although I'm sure he could have climbed down or even fell unscathed since it was not very high. He eventually got to use the shared braincell and now he climbs down from the same spots with zero issues (face up)
Ahh. So I have cat brain! My skills often surpass my fears, which are great.
I've found they like to get up there and then beg for attention. Then they get down on their own later when they're bored.
I keep checking on them because t's not impossible that a cat could get stuck, but none of mine (well, feral cats that adopted my tree, anyway) ever have actually been stuck.
They do get stuck, but mostly as younglings. Their claws are perfect for climbing but not so great for going down, unless the cat realizes it has to do it "backwards". When they are young I assume that when they reach their target spot, they soon realize that climbing down will be very sketchy since they do it the same way they got there (ie, head first) and start panicking.
I had two cats we had to "rescue" once or twice from trees as kittens and both ended up getting pretty good at climbing down as they grew older.