Five Stories All About Cats

[Music] a lot of people see a cat up in a tree they're just like oh yeah that thing I'll get down here in a couple days sweetie how long you been in this tricky but what they don't realize is that sometimes they don't I'm Shawn Sears and I'm Tom Otto with canopy Cat Rescue and we rescue cats that get stuck up in trees cats get stuck in trees a lot we've been rescuing since about 2008 I'm getting yeah we've heard you more cat rescues than anybody in the world we range from about 375 to 400 rescues every year okay there was a lot of people that can't afford to pay your normal arborist five six seven hundred dollars to rescue a cat both Tom and I really love cats he's a total sweetie ginger boy will come out and rescue somebody's cat for free canopy Cat Rescue is as shown well I think we'll be there in about 45 minutes or so climbing trees is inherently risky our average tree height is 100 feet sometimes they're a lot taller we started to set out how the cats doing as we're getting close and then hopefully we can receive the rescue I'm gonna go on a stack how's that sound [Music] the look that we get from the cat owners face when we hand them their cat back is just this overwhelming sense of relief are you happy to have him back I know we love doing this and we're gonna do it for as long as we can we don't really consider ourselves heroes but we do like to think of ourselves as just two guys that are out there restoring the faith in humanity you can't really call me a crazy cat lady I'm obsessive I would rather have 800 cats in another man I don't need a man in my life been there done that bought the t-shirt new this is called the cathouse on the Kings it's a 12-acre no cage no-kill sanctuary rescue Adoption Center and we also do a lot of space and neuters we have close to 800 adults and 300 kittens on the property as we speak it wasn't like I planned hey I think I'll have a thousand cats what a novel idea it wasn't like that I thought well there's always room for more and they're gonna kill this one we have way too many cats so this this was my house you can see that it's an extremely large house so you had to give up your home for these cat I tried for about 16 years to make it work but it wasn't okay having 60 something in my bedroom one night they threw up in my ear and that was when I move it all 4,200 square feet is theirs that's why we call it the cat house we have saved over 28,000 cats in 24 years we have a staff now of about 45 you have to be very on top of the job because you have a lot of cats that you're responsible for no point in rescuing them and taking them in if you can't take care of them you know this is not normal people would after a while would say well you know I think I've done this in that I think I'll go have a life now I think I'll go travel no not me Daphne look this way yeah come on I want you to be on TV [Music] the trick is trying to think like a cat it's one thing to think it would be like if I were a cat it's another thing to try to figure out well what is it like for a cat to be a cat so I've different ways of creating her kind of says [Music] David tie classical musician mostly by trade play the cello in the National Symphony and that came up with the idea of writing music for cats here my bird songs for study I slow them down cats are not very vocal I'm not particularly social the ultimate goal to be able to communicate in something like their language what other sounds are there that you know cats would enjoy most of the brain development of a cat happens outside the womb I thought the sound of suckling is a reward related sound that all cats will have heard as their brains were forming this swishing kind of sound yeah I would totally use that I'd name that after your jacket that's my Louie W swish another example of a sound when you play this music how does a cat react there are things like they would rub up against the speakers it shows kind of ownership and but showing just attention and it tends to be more comforting to those cats who have had something of a hard life is that cats who need more comfort are more comforted by it do you have a cat no no I actually don't I'm allergic to cats you're allergic to cats [Music] fake talking cat just what we need around here Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch graced our screens in the 90s Salem guard my door so Jenny doesn't go anywhere okay hey dogs guard cats watch and judge for the active behind the sass playing the role of a puppet suited him just fine puppets can get away with murder don't ever do a scene with him no one's looking at you I'm having a bad fur day hi I'm Nick Mekhi and I'm best known probably as the voice of Salem the talking cat on Sabrina the Teenage Witch Salem was a very frustrated guy who tried to take over the world his punishment was they turned him into a cat for a hundred years there was a lovely bitterness to the character that I leaned into hard Salem you're the only one who understands me yeah but it doesn't mean that I can you know I was in the writers room on that show too so I could pitch my own jokes maybe I should take your temperature under the tongue under the time I was on set doing the voice live first four years took a village to do that cat because then you have animal trainers on a multitude of live cats and there was a remarkable crew of puppeteers our head puppeteer was Tom fountain is really gifted he ran the mouth and we had Maury who wrote the body and she spent her days and darkness jammed into that kitchen island counter you know just working that body it was a real team effort but Nick is more than just a cat voice it was also the voice of Norbert don't mess with the bull my friend you'll get the horns the big older brother I'm the Nickelodeon cartoon angry beavers I've been a writer producer on a bunch of other shows my king of Queens I also wrote the paul blart mall cop movies with my pal Kevin James and he's been in front of the camera too on some well-known shows like Seinfeld That 70's Show and this IOL lab thanks to America Online I'm really just goofing off this is back during my trying to make my Christmas Actor phase you did some deep dig there huh so it's like just you and me want to do each other's hair I love cats I've had cats my whole life up until very recently we had a cat named Salem a little black cat and we rescued for 16 years I tried to make friends with my namesake wasn't in the cards hated my god [Music] in southern Pennsylvania there is a battlefield a battlefield so important that it is thought to be the turning point of the American Civil War this is a story about that place it's also a story about cats thousands and thousands of little cats this is Rebecca hi I'm Rebecca and this is her twin sister Ruth hi I'm Ruth and we run a museum of dioramas that are made with a hand made at Civil War cats Civil War cats the combination of a childhood love for clay cats and a strong fascination with the American Civil War it started out as a hobby that we just did as kids putzing around in our bedrooms that bit of child's play led to a full-fledged museum which opened in 2013 the two of us discussed how much do we want to emphasize the cat thing because we don't want to come off as cutesy cats the idea is the stories of the men not so much the fact that they're cats they just are cats because they're cats incredibly each of these scenes is to scale 1/8 of an inch equals one foot in cat feet and so each one of our soldiers represents one soldier who would have been on the field will calculate the numbers that would have been left in the regiment and we'll fill it in with that men use cats soldiers so for example lower on top we're going to eventually have about 5,000 soldiers on it typically one like the angle we figure took us about four and a half years the Little Round Top diorama we figure is more of a five or six year diorama we really just want to make the Civil War more approachable I guess for people so they can relate to the history and have more of a connection with the men and the women involved now that the word of this cat museums out all the people who love cats come in and now not only are they seeing our dioramas are falling in love with the five and a half thousand little furry smiles smiling at them but they're also learning the stories and suddenly they have an appreciation of Gettysburg and the history just because they came to see the cats [Music] you

Channel: Great Big Story

Views: 340,003

Rating: 4.9432926 out of 5

Keywords: great big story, gbs, lag, documentary, docs, new releases, great big reels, cats, animals, cat lady, nature & animals, meow, music, human condition, cat lovers

Id: DNOwfYeUpBk

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2019