Sunday, April 06, 2008

Cat rescue

When I came back from work on Wednesday, there was no Chatouille!!!!! Her food bowl was still full and she was nowhere to see. I called her and called her again, shaking her bowl of food, flapping the cat flap, making my keys jingle, but still no cat... When Trave got home, I sent him with her bowl around the nieghbourhood to try to find her while I would stay home in case she came back.

Then a spooky thing happened. A knock on the door. It was the RSPCA! How did they know we had lost our cat?

(I must add an explanation here: the RSPCA just happened to be fundraising for animal rescue in our street that evening, hence the knock on the door.)

Eventually, Trave found her: she had fallen into a garage which roof was damaged and was trapped inside. The door was locked and nobody knew whose garage it was. So I suggested that we climbed to the roof and lowered a basket with food in it so that she would jump in and we would rescue her by lifting her up in the air. Quite dramatic, isn't it? We had to borrow our neighbour's ladder, because we have lent ours to some friends who are decorating their house. Off we went to the garage with a ladder, a torch, a cat carrying case, a basket, together with a couple of scarves to make a rope...

Chatouille was not keen on climbing into the basket though, maybe she was too scared. Another neighbour who was keen on assisting with the rescue suggested to use a second ladder to get down into the garage. So he lent us his ladder and Trave went up onto the roof, then down into the garage with the carrying cased, while the neighbour went up the ladder to collect the case and pass it down to me.

And this is how we rescued our cat! Since then she has been extremely cuddly :D.

Hopefully, noone was watching thinking we were smuggling stuff out of the garage...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, how did you find her Trave, was she making a lot of noise? Were you here when we lost Dixie, or was it Silky? She was only stuck up a tree. It was quite hard to rescue her, but at least we only needed one ladder.

Is the garage close to your garden? Or is she a wanderer? Cats! who needs them! Give her a hug from me.

I don't understand about the RSPCA. Were they any help?
V

green clementine said...

I have added an explanation re RSPCA.

The garage is only two houses away, to the back of our garden. She has just started to go out properly last weekend. (our next-door neighbour is not impressed that she now goes into his garden...)

trave said...

I couldn't hear her very well - we'd seen the roof damage to the garage earlier in the week, so I was guessing that she could be in there.

I had to wait and call her quite a bit before she replied, though. I was very glad to hear her! After a while I could then see her through the crack at the side of the door, but she had to wait to be rescued...