How to Tie a Cat's Paw Knot

Video Transcript

"A Cat's Paw is a really great hitch to learn if you are actually using this for a heavy, heavy load. This is really used a lot by longshoremen where it was perfected, and if we look down here I'll show you how this is done. We've got, let me use my little ring I've got here, and I've got my loop of rope. What I'm going to do here is, I'm going to take my loop, I'm going to fold it over the ends here and bring my two ends together, like so. Bring it down just a little bit more here. As you can see, I've got it like that. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take it and on these lower lines here, I'm gong to twist it right over, so it makes a nice elbow here. I'm going to twist it a second time, this is for extra strength, this extra twist is. I'm going to do the same over here on my other side. Once and twice, then I'm going to bring them together, like so, so you can see I've got my twists here, twists around and it threads really nice and I've got these kind of loops back to back if you kind of think of it like that. Then I'm just going to take my hook, push it through like that and there you go. And when this tightens up, you tighten this up, this will hold a really heavy load and if what happens, if one of these lines actually breaks, the other line because of these twists will actually hold this load long enough for you to lower it back to the ground to re-establish it with a new rope."