Winnipeg firefighters rescue cat from tree

It may be the ultimate firefighter cliché, but as temperatures dipped yesterday, Winnipeg firefighters went up a tree to rescue a tiny victim.

United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg tweeted that a Winnipeg Fire Department crew had rescued a cat from a tree in the city Saturday.

"Rescues come in all shapes & sizes: Last night in dangerously cold temperatures, a WFD crew needed a ladder truck to rescue a pet entangled high up in a tree [while] its panicked owners looked on," they tweeted. "Some may joke about cats in trees, but this was anything but funny for its owners."

UFFW president Alex Forrest said people may snicker, but firefighters may have saved more than one life last night.

"We had a call that a group of citizens were going to climb a tree to get a cat," said Forrest. "The cat was actually trapped because it had its leash on and the leash had wrapped around the limb."

As temperatures got colder and the wind picked up, firefighters decided to try to rescue the cat before someone got hurt trying to do it themselves, said Forrest. 

"The cat was going to freeze to death if no one went to grab it."

Front row seat to rescue

Kevin Basken lives two doors down from the owners of the trapped cat, and the tree it got stuck in hangs over his garage.

After being woken up by a knock on his front door from firefighters asking if it would be OK to park a ladder truck in his driveway, he had a front row seat for the rescue.

"This cat was about 40 feet, or 15 meters up in a tree above our garage… so the guys in the bucket of this ladder sort of had to go up and down and around some of the branches," he said Sunday night.

"Finally they got to the cat, retracted the boom, brought him down and handed him over to another firefighter on the ground. It was about an hour-long of excitement in our driveway."

Basken says he'd heard a cat howling from the area around the tree when he and his wife left for a Christmas party around 7:30 p.m. He used a flashlight to try to find the animal but had no luck.

He figures the meowing had been coming from the cat in the tree, which would mean the cat had been up there, in the cold, for several hours before the rescue.

"I checked my phone, it was -25 C outside… and there was a bit of a breeze so I would guess it was well colder than -30 C with the wind chill," he said. "How a cat could survive that I have no idea… that cat had to be in the tree for at least six or seven hours, which is much longer than I would have tolerated."

Basken has nothing but good things to say about the firefighters he watched save the cat.

"Everyone was calm and they were just doing what they could to save this silly cat."

Forrest said in all it took about two hours to set up the truck and rescue the cat.

"I can tell you, that cat was part of that family," said Forrest. "I can just imagine the haters on social media right now saying 'firefighters rescue a cat, but you have to realize every life is precious,' even if it is a small cat, to that family."

Forrest said the family called today to thank the firefighters, and let them know the cat is doing well.