To knock on a door at 7am on a Sunday

[CatRescueNeeded]

Hi

My cat has been missing since yesterday evening and I’ve just found him up an incredibly tall tree up the road. I’ll contact an emergency tree surgeon asap. How early is it reasonable to knock on a neighbours door on a Sunday? AIBU to knock at 7am? They live a few doors up so I’ve never met them

Lots of research in this area

pet is not in distress, its up a tree and grumpy

Glad your cat is safe OP. I’ve woken my neighbours before at 7.30am on a Sunday because my house cat had got in their garden, was panicking and heading off in the wrong direction. Not sure they were very happy about being woken but my cat was my priority. I wouldn’t mind being woken because of someone’s pet being in distress.

Thank you for the heads up!
The thing is, I like cats. It's just the daftness of thinking a picture of the cat in the tree would 'help' PPs to be able to give advice on cat removal...

It isn't empathetic to wake neighbours up unnecessarily before so much at opening a tin of food to fetch the cat down, no. I assume that's what you meant?

I’m assuming OP didn’t want to trespass without permission.
Id feel the need to ask before I walked on someone’s property.

especially as anothe MNetter here stated their dogs would start barking and wake the whole street up

I wonder if all the people on cat threads who go on about "bird decimation" as a reason for their dislike of cats eat wholly organic food, have read Silent Spring, are members of the RSPB, WWT, local Wildlife Trust or similar, boycott certain holiday destinations in the Mediterranean, boycott netted fish, and boycott fish caught on long lines given that pesticides, reduction in habitat, the fishing industry and the shooting of migrating birds in the Med also "decimate birds"

(which they do of course. I'm not arguing with that. But it seems as though cats are an easier target on which to vent their wrath than agriculture, fishing and general human activity.)

It's just a thought.

I've woken my neighbour at midnight, 3am and 5am over a similar thing.

Glad he came home. Also glad you didn't have to call out a tree surgeon (I imagine the cost would have been astronomcal)

Bloody cats!!

My sadly no longer with us cat had a few instances like this over the years. She managed to jump over to a neighbours terrace and couldn't get back (middle of the night, newly moved in, 7 months pregnant... eventually we managed to get a ladder to her)

Same cat also scaled the highest tree she could find when she managed to escape the night before she was being spayed. It's as if she knew!! She went up about 7pm and eventually came down at 3am.

Miss that girl.

Depends on the neighbour I suppose. I'd have been fine with being woken for that reason.

Nobody said anything about chopping a tree down. Tree surgeons tend to be rope trained so can get much higher up tree than most. It was to get him to climb the tree not chop it down.

Yes, I know, I've been told this by a few people and have retracted!

For those stating that if the cat got up there then they could perfectly easily get themselves down, here's an extract from the Cats Protection website -

"While cats are good at climbing up trees, they’re not so well built for climbing back down. Their instinct is to climb down facing forwards, but the curve of their claws makes it difficult to grip the bark. They also struggle to co-ordinate their back and front legs. Other animals, such as squirrels, are able to rotate their back feet. This means their claws are facing upwards for better grip. Cats cannot do this."

So no, it isn't "easy enough" for them to get themselves down. And we may know they aren't all that unlikely to injure themselves badly if they jump from not too high up, the cat probably doesn't if they are 20-30 feet up above the ground.

I would be really annoyed if woken up at 7am on a Sunday morning for a cat. And even more irritated if there was an unnecessary fire brigade or tree surgeon in my garden.

The cat got up there, the cat will get down without any unnecessary drama, nonsense or interruption.

Honestly, have people zero resilience or ability to problem solve anymore.

A lot of cat haters on this post.

Glad he came home and didn't cost you a fortune!

I would get a huge fright if someone chapped my door at that time but I would get over it quickly if it meant helping an animal. I feel sorry for the people on this thread that sound like they'd lynch you for it. It's easier going through life being nice than it is being a dick.

Why? Lots of people are shift workers and lots of people need a lie in on their non working days if they're up early every weekday.

A cat up a tree isn't going to come to any harm if it has to stay there another couple of hours to a more reasonable time of day. It's not like anyone is expecting it to be stuck there for another day or two!

Not denying humans are also a issue.
Domestic cats are a massive problem given the over population in residential areas.
I don't hate cats and if I lived rurally I would have one.
My new build estate has two cats per house on my road alone. When I moved in it had every type of wild bird wrens, sparrows, tits and robins. Cats have reduced this to pigeons, magpies and crows.
One action that has decimated nature in my area. Apparently not appreciating cats makes me a animal hater but actually the opposite is true.

Fire service don’t do anything they need tree surgeon with the equipment to climb the tree and rescue the cat.

A tree surgeon seems very rash. Surely once you're allowed access to the garden you can lure the cat down with treats and positive calls? He got up there, so he definitely is capable of getting down again on his own. I've seen it so many times.
7am is not reasonable. I'd put a note through the door. Then if they don't text you or call you by about 10 I'd try their door.
Can you speak to/call the cat from your property? Get the dreamies out! I'm sure he'll come down without a tree surgeon.

To be clear, to all the people who've quoted me, I probably wouldn't go knocking on anyone's door early on a Sunday, but I wouldn't mind if someone knocked on mine if they were worried about a pet.
And re shift workers and the like, you might equally be met with fury at any other time of day.
I'd probably look for signs of life before knocking unless I was really worried.
I was more surprised at the number of people saying they'd be outraged at being disturbed. I can think of much worse, like one place we lived that people were racing cars up and down our road into the small hours, keeping the whole family awake. In comparison, a quick knock at the door to ask permission to get a distressed cat out of my tree would barely register. If I wasn't working, I'd just go back to bed.

I'd be very annoyed to be woken up at 7.00 am any morning of the week, especially a Sunday, for a cat. A cat! A child in crisis, okay; a cat, never. FFS

Wouldn’t bother me knocking at 7. If it was every week then yeah.

Wow, mindblowing selfishness

My new build estate has two cats per house on my road alone. When I moved in it had every type of wild bird wrens, sparrows, tits and robins. Cats have reduced this to pigeons, magpies and crows.

So nothing whatsoever to do with trees and hedges being cut down, months or years of building works, people, cars, kids etc having any impact on wildlife in the area?

I also think you may also be over estimating the number of cats in your road (possibly to make a point) - 2 per house, really? I can't think of a single road I know where there are 2 cats in every house, out of the 12 houses in my terrace and the opposite one there are a total of 2 houses with 2 cats (one being mine, who are indoor only) and 1 with 1 (indoor only) cat. There's also around 15 dogs between those 12 houses (admittedly 10 in one house).

I see a couple of other cats coming in my garden but they come from the road over the back of mine

@Allergictoironing
I’m not overestimating. I know all my neighbours.
And I was one of the first on my estate so I know what was in my garden and what has been the effect of my neighbours increasing the car population.
And I’m just in one corner of one estate in town of many.