Contrary to popular lore, firefighters don’t save cats from trees, but it was a cat’s would-be rescuer who had to be plucked from his arboreal perch in Nanaimo on Monday.
Nanaimo Fire Rescue got the call shortly before 10 p.m. to a location near Creekside Drive in central Nanaimo where a man who’d tried to rescue a cat stuck in a tree ended up finding himself stranded.
“It was for a man in a tree who went up to rescue a neighbour’s cat and on his way up there, he dropped his flashlight and wasn’t able to make his way down,” said Greg Norman, Nanaimo Fire Rescue assistant chief.
Nanaimo Fire Rescue dispatched its 30-metre aerial truck to the scene where firefighters managed to get the victim into the unit’s bucket and lower him to safety.
“That’s about it. They were able to safely get him into the bucket and get him back down to the ground,” Norman said.
All told, the retrieval mission, including travel and setup time, took about an hour before the truck was back in service.
Norman said there was no information recorded in the file about the disposition of the cat, but it is generally accepted wisdom among firefighters that cats almost always find their ways back down from trees unassisted, as did this one, apparently.