A Mission Above the Ground

It started with two men who could climb anything. Shaun Sears was a mountain guide,  Tom Otto a municipal arborist. Both men came from different corners of the climbing world but eventually crossed paths through the small network of professional tree workers in Washington. 

“The tree service industry is a pretty small group,” Sears said. “Typically, the tree service people know each other; they do training together, they work with each other.” 

Sears and Otto started a company called Canopy Conservation, where they did contract work for fish and wildlife. Their job was to climb into the nests of birds like eagles, osprey and herons and maintain the cameras. 

Meanwhile, there was another problem at hand, and it just happened to fall on Sears and Otto to do something about it: Cats stuck in trees. Sears and Otto both had other jobs and more scheduling flexibility. While other tree service workers would be busy cutting down trees all day, they would connect the worried owners to Sears and Otto. 

“No matter how many interviews, podcasts, or public speaking things that we do, people are always going to think that the fire department rescues cats in trees, and they do not,” Sears said. “I would say less than 5 % of fire departments will actually go out for a cat in a tree. It’s pretty rare if they do.” The calls kept getting passed along, and that’s how Sears and Otto started their cat rescue efforts.

The Birth of Cat Canopy Rescue

By late 2009, they were answering those calls regularly, and it didn’t take long for the two climbers to realize that they were filling a gap with a unique point of skills. 

“Typically, the people that help cats in trees are professional tree climbers who work for a tree service,” Sears said. “Whether they’re good with cats is a whole other deal.”

They made it official by calling themselves Canopy Cat Rescue. For a short time after launching, they charged a small fee in accordance with how far they had to drive. Even though fees were usually only around $50- $75, after a few months, they began noticing that people hesitated to call because the cost had them concerned. 

“Before they even told us about the cat in the tree, they’d [ask] ‘how much is this gonna cost me?’” Sears said. “That kind of clued Tom and [me] in on–  Let’s not make money off of people’s misfortune. If they want to donate, if they want to support what we’re doing, great. Otherwise, we’re going to offer this for free.”

They transitioned to a donation-only model while continuing their cat rescues. What started as a simple act of service soon evolved into a digital movement. 

“We have a pretty big social media following, and so we tend to post videos and photos, and we’ll get donations from the other side of the world,” Sears said. “From people [who] just love what we do, and they want to support us, and they’ll get on our website and throw us a donation.”

Large corporations have even taken notice, with companies like Microsoft and major banks offering donation-matching programs that amplify community contributions. The nonprofit also occasionally runs small merchandise fundraisers. 

“We’ll put up a new design of a hoodie or a shirt, and it’s crazy, people have been following us for a long time, and they have a backlog [or] a collection of like a dozen or more Canopy Cat Rescue shirts and hoodies,” Sears said. “People like cat stuff. So that helps too.”

Climbing into Chaos

Every rescue is different, and although Sears and Otto are experienced climbers, it’s not always about the climb. It’s a mixture of the cat and the tree. 

“You can be a really good climber, but if you don’t know how to get on the cat’s level, you might as well just not even attempt it,” Sears said.

Last summer brought one of the most difficult rescues they’ve faced: a white cat named Georgie, stranded at the very top of a cedar tree in Duval, Washington. The day was brutally hot at 98 degrees Fahrenheit, and the climb was only feasible to the point where Sears couldn’t get closer than 18 feet from the cat.  

Sears and Otto often rate their climbs on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being easy and 10 being the most difficult. Most of their resues are around the 2-3 zone but on occasion they get the “star on the Christmas tree,”– that precisely being Georgie perched on the top of unstable branches. For cases like this, Sears and Otto have developed creative methods to extend their reach. 

“Obviously, we didn’t invent the net, but we sort of invented a way to extend the reach of the net,” Sears said. So we’ve added pruning poles to the base of the net so we can scoop the kitty in the net when it’s above us.”

However, it’s not enough to have just the tools and skills. They also need the cat’s cooperation. Sometimes, when the cats see the net coming, they hop right in, but Georgie’s rescue had a few more challenges. Sears was in high stress in high heat, gripping the pole with what his sweaty hands could muster. Georgie still wasn’t letting go. 

Eventually, they got Georgie down safely. He explained that the rescues in general are at their hardest when the cats are beyond reach, if the cat is heavier, or if they are skittish and don’t want anyone to touch them. They have bite-proof gloves for those situations.  

Myths in the Canopy

For all the climbing they do, Sears and Otto also try to do their part in educating people as to why cats end up in trees and preventative solutions so that it doesn’t happen again, or better yet, never. 

“One of our pet peeves is that we will get on a rescue, and the cat owner or somebody will say, ‘I wish my cat was smarter,” Sears said. “It has nothing to do with intelligence. Generally speaking, cats climb trees to save their life. So it’s usually another cat, a raccoon, dog, or most of the time a coyote that chases the cat up a tree.”

Another common misconception is that people believe the cats will come down from the trees when they are hungry. Even though Sears and Otto have been on cases where the cat has only been stuck for a few minutes, they still remember a cat that was stuck in a tree for 24 days one fall in Spokane. 

“I mean, I think the cat was hungry,” Sears said. 

He also warned that some internet advice can make things worse. Some people read that you should put food at the base of the tree to lure the cat down, when in reality, that food is only attracting the same thing that chased the cat up there originally. As long as that thing is being fed below, the cat will remain in the tree.

Sears and Otto offer practical solutions: keep cats indoors whenever possible, build enclosed outdoor “catios,” or carefully leash-train them — though even that comes with its own set of risks. 

“People will take their cats to places that they’re totally unfamiliar with, and then they’ll climb a tree,” Sears said. “Now they’re at some rest stop a hundred miles away from their house, and they’re up in a tree with a leash and a harness on. That sort of requires an immediate response.”

Expanding the Canopy

Even after 800 rescues a year, Sears and Otto aren’t slowing down. To keep donations flowing in, they’re considering creating a coffee table book or writing stories from the cat’s perspective, both in addition to merchandise sales. 

For now, though, their focus remains on keeping the work sustainable. Donating is the best way to support Cat Canopy Rescue, and people can donate through their website https://www.canopycatrescue.com/ or Venmo, though they encourage people to donate via their website. However, people still find other ways to donate when money isn’t something they are able to share. 

“We’ve been pretty rich in eggs,” Sears said. “We’ll go out and rescue somebody’s cat and they’ll be like, ‘Well, don’t have much money, but we have all these chickens. Can we give you two dozen eggs?’” At one point, they had almost 60 eggs in their fridge and made an abundance of omelets. 

As their work grows, Sears and Otto are looking to extend their reach beyond Washington. “We get a lot of people that are interested or inspired by what we do,” Sears said. “The thing is that we are definitely looking to train and bring other people on. However, we’re looking to train and bring other people on where we don’t get to, where there’s like a black hole of people to help cats and trees. For example, like Northern California.”

Sears and Otto primarily cover western Washington but have recently begun expanding eastward, training two of Sears’s rock-climbing friends to take on rescues in that area. They’re looking for somebody to cover the Port Angeles area, as that is especially difficult for Sears and Otto to get to. 

For now, they’re focused on finding the right people: Climbers with both the skill and the compassion to continue the work. “We don’t need anybody in the Seattle area,” Sears said. “We want to find people that are in these areas of need.”