Tree climbing 101

As the climbing season has started again now the weather has cooled down a bit I thought I would share with you all how to climb a tree with a harness and lead rather than free climbing.

I know there’s lots of sighted cats that use a lead as well as us blindies but I can only speak from a blind cat point of view so I hope you can use some of my top tips. Maybe one day when I have a secure garden of my own with a nice big tree I’ll be able to free climb. Until then and as we only have communal gardens climbing with a harness and lead is a compromise I’m happy to make to be able to be outdoors and climb at all.

Tree climbing with a lead means that you have to have trust in the human holding the lead. You need to be an experienced team and understand the ways of communicating via the lead that you’ve developed whilst going out on walkies. When we’re out walking together I know that when mummy tugs gently in one direction or the other then that is the way I need to go. It could just be so that I don’t wrap myself around a bush or that I might just walk into something. A sharp tug means that I need to change direction quickly as there’s something dangerous or something that might hurt me. The same moves apply when I’m up a tree.

The gentle pressure of the lead tells me the way to go, it shows me the way back down to safety. It’s mummy’s job to guide me in the right direction. Her job to show me the way, I’m too busy concentrating on the birds in the trees and not wobbling and falling from the branches.

She has to (try to) make sure the lead doesn’t get caught around anything, which in a tree can be quite difficult. She doesn’t want me to get caught up in anything whilst I’m up the tree as that would mean that I might get stuck, not through not being able to get down myself but if the lead can’t move then neither can I!

One advantage of climbing with a lead is that you have a built in safety system. I know that if I was to fall or just get fed up of trying to get down properly and jump that the harness and lead will act as a safety line. As a certified master tree climber I always make sure safety comes first.

Mummy also uses the tap technique to guide me down, and calls to me so I know where she is and which direction to go in. She taps the tree as I come down and from that I can tell how far I have to go and what direction to go in. As she’s talking to me I can follow the sound of her voice but it also provides me with reassurance, I always feel much safer and more confident when I know mummy is with me. If daddy has to come down then both mummy and I know we’re both in trouble – mummy for letting me go too high and me for being a baby and not listening to mummy and not trying very hard. All of this help and encouragement doesn’t always work though, being a determined blind cat I often try to do things my own way and without help. Sometimes doing it my own way doesn’t always pay off and the results can be mixed, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t though I never show it because I’m a cat and whatever I do I mean to do of course otherwise it would just be embarrassing.

She also watches me to make sure I don’t go too high, I’d climb right up to the top of the tree if I could but mummy won’t let me go that high. She says that the higher I go the harder it is to keep the lead free from the branches and the higher up I go the thinner the branches get for me to stand on. She also says that if I get stuck then she needs to be able to reach me to help me down. She says that people think she’s strange enough already taking me for a walk without her having to climb trees to get me down as well. Very occasionally I go a bit too high and moan that I can’t get down and then mummy has to phone daddy to come and help as he’s much taller than mummy and can reach higher into the tree to help me. It doesn’t happen very often though, normally I find a way down one way or another and just between us, I just moan and shout to try to get mummy to let me have the easy way down and have her or daddy help me. It’s not that easy though now as mummy won’t just help me coz I shout and moan, she makes me work hard to get myself down. She always says “come on Jenny I know you can do it, you’ve done it before.”