An adventurous kitty has been rescued after it became stuck about 10 metres up a tree in Mount Keira.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Wollongong City State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers were called to Medway Drive about 8pm after a resident alerted police to the kitten’s predicament.
Menno Schaaf, from the Wollongong City SES unit, said Rural Fire Service volunteers were initially dispatched to the scene on Monday night, before the SES’s vertical rescue operators were called in to complete the job.
“They set up a ladder and stabilised it … climbed the ladder, secured themselves and rescued the cat,” Mr Schaaf said.
The SES crew was able to safely retrieve the kitten, aged about four months, from the conifer. It was brought down to the ground – without having to use any of its nine lives.
However, the animal clearly wasn’t fazed by the actions of emergency services, with the Wollongong SES unit posting on its Facebook page that the kitten was “quickly taken inside before it made another attempted summit of the tree”.
“From my understanding, it was very keen just to go anywhere,” Mr Schaaf said.
“We didn’t even get a chance to take a photo of the kitten; it was just very quickly stranded away back inside before it could make another attempt at anything.”
The SES volunteers were assisted by members of the Illawarra Police Rescue Squad, which was standard procedure for any vertical rescue in the Wollongong area, he said.
Mr Schaaf said it was “not the usual sort of tree” that came to mind when people imagined a cat being stuck up a tree, with conifers rather dense in terms of foliage.
“We’ve rescued people out of gum trees and that kind of thing before and certainly having a straight trunk up makes it easier to climb the tree,” he said.
“We’ve got arborists who are part of the unit as well, who have assisted police with rescues up gum trees and climbing them using those sorts of techniques.
“They’re just not possible on these sorts of trees, so really the only option is that ladder leaning against it and doing it that way.”
Mr Schaaf said the adventurous kitty, whose breed was unknown, had been about 10 metres up the tree and “still has all of its nine lives” following the successful rescue.