This Side of the Pond

Wales has attracted my attention again this week with a story that sounds like a picture book for children – something along the lines of the woman who lived in a shoe or the spider that ate the fly.

The town in which this tale begins is a lot bigger than the one I told you about in my last column and, as far as I’m aware, its residents have had no trouble logging on to the internet. But what makes Tredegar similar to last week’s featured village is that a single event managed to bring a whole community together.

When I say “event”, what I really mean is “cat”. A cat who created a conundrum it took several days to unravel.

The story begins with a lady by the name of Leanne, who lives in the aforementioned town of Tredegar and was out for a walk with her friends when she heard an unexpected noise. It wasn’t clear where the sound was coming from, but she described it as a “pitiful cry”.

Clearly kind of heart, she wasn’t willing to continue until she had located the source of distress. She checked the bushes, looked behind obstacles and wandered back and forth, but couldn’t pinpoint it.

The reason for this was simple: the noise was coming from 40 feet above their heads. They still couldn’t see what was making it, but they were eventually able to figure out that a cat had gotten itself trapped at the top of a tree.

In Britain, the right call to make when an animal is in trouble is to the folks at the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Unfortunately, they told our heroine that the organization’s policy is to wait 24 hours before sending out a team, because cats have a habit of getting themselves out of pickles.

The next day, the cat was still there and the first of the rescue attempts began. The RSPCA attended the scene alongside the South Wales Fire Service.

This sounds like a dream team for a stuck feline: people who love animals combined with people who own long ladders. Unfortunately, nobody told the cat, which scurried even further up the tree.

The RSPCA promised to come back the next day to see if it had ventured any lower. It had not.

By this time, word was getting around town that an unidentified kitty was in unresolved peril, so our heroine was now getting constant calls and messages from well-wishers wanting to help. If the ladder wasn’t going to work, people had a whole slew of other ideas.

The next bright idea to turn up at the tree was a bowl of food and a bag of treats, which you’d think would be guaranteed to work. It did not.

Someone then appeared with a fishing net. I’m not entirely clear on their methodology, and I’m not sure they were either, but it turned out that flinging a net towards a living animal that’s currently 40 feet above your head was not a workable solution.

A tree surgeon moseyed on over to see if they could help; again, I’m not completely sure what the plan was. Presumably, they were able to confirm that the structure in which the cat was perched was, indeed, a tree, and a very healthy one at that.

A tree removal company then chimed in with an offer to help. I am assuming someone gently pointed out to them that removing the tree was likely to also remove the cat.

A couple of people with better planning skills brought cherry pickers to the tree, but they couldn’t help either. Each time they reached for it, the cat simply jumped to a higher branch.

(That’s cats for you, I suppose; they do what they please and in their own time. It’s just as well there were no doors involved in this process or even now it would still be deciding whether to stand inside or outside or inside or outside or inside.)

At this point, a local scaffolding company caught wind of the drama and realized it was in the perfect position to help. A team of four worked through the day and into the night to build a four-story platform all the way up the side of the tree to directly under the cat.

The first night was a bust. They left some food and water, but the cat remained resolute in its decision to cling to a branch.

As night fell, the humans glumly left, and the cat remained in its tree. It seemed this was a puzzle that would never be successfully solved, made worse by the sheer number of people now gathered under the tree each day to see what was going to happen.

Until, that is, the crowd returned in the morning to find the cat sat nonchalantly on the top tier. Nobody dared approach for fear it would once again skedaddle, so the waiting game began.

Four days after the adventure began, the scaffolders were able to place a trap containing food and milk on the top tier and the cat fell for their cunning trick. The whole of Tredegar breathed a sigh of relief.

If this tale has taught me anything – other than that fishing nets don’t work on mammals – it’s that human beings can do anything if we choose to band together. Get enough of us in one place with our thinking caps on, and we can sometimes even outsmart a cat.