Should I have left the cat in the tree?

This happened twice with two different cats. We live in a rural area quickly becoming suburbs. On two occasions one of our cats climbed up a tree and couldn’t (I say wouldn’t) come down. My wife insisted I climb up the trees to help the cats down, but I replied the cats would come down when they were hungry enough. On the first occasion I left the cat up there over 24 hours before my wife’s nagging was more than I could bare. The second time I didn’t wait as long as the cat wasn’t very high up.