This was the occasion of another argument
between me and my assistant Una.
I reasoned along the same lines as you,
Dave—cats have been climbing trees and
presumably getting down from them for
millions of years without the intervention
of fire departments. What seems
more likely is that we now have
neurotic cat owners who see
their pets climbing
trees, leap to the
assumption that
the cat can’t get
down, and figure
the answer
to all of life’s
problems is to
call the fire
department.
Una didn’t see it
that way. She observed
that cats have curved
claws and strong back
legs that facilitate
climbing upwards but
are less useful when
it’s time to return to
earth. Indeed, cats
must often back
their way down or
jump from the lowest branch, which Una
knows from personal observation is both
ungainly and hazardous.
Me: I’m sorry, I’m not buying this. You’re
suggesting that, for cats, tree-climbing is a
one-way street, and that if we examined
the fossil record we would find vast strata
of fossil forests with fossil cats crammed
in the upper branches, futilely awaiting
human beings, urbanization, combustible
buildings, the hook and ladder, the telephone,
and other necessities whose emergence
was still eons off. I respectfully suggest
that neurotic cat owners is the more
parsimonious explanation.
Una: I’m not saying all cats get stuck in trees. On the contrary, there are more than 80 million domestic cats in the United States, the overwhelming majority of whom get into and out of trees without assistance. However, some cats clearly do get stuck in trees, including some nondomesticated ones, as demonstrated by this YouTube video (tiny.cc./stucktiger) showing a tiger stuck in a tree at a zoo.
Me [watching]: Huh. That’s one confused-
looking tiger. Even so, if I’m a fireman
and the call comes in to get it out of
the tree, I’m hoping it’s my day off.
Una: You see the tiger’s problem. It’s trying to climb down the tree headfirst. This is not a graceful spectacle.
Me: OK, I revise my view of the situation.
Cats have an easier time getting up
than down, no doubt because, as carnivores,
one reason they climb trees in the
first place is to spot prey upon which they
then pounce, thereby simultaneously solving
the problem of where their next meal is
coming from and how they’re going to get
down. We know further that even without
some hapless herbivore underfoot to cushion
the blow, cats are capable of surviving
jumps from great heights without injury.
However, some trifling number of cats
is either too decrepit, timid, or dumb to
jump, and it’s these cats that fire departments
are called upon to rescue, although
from a Darwinian standpoint they’re probably
not doing the family Felidae any favors
to return these specimens to the
gene pool.
The question
remains
whether fire
departments rescue
cats from trees in statistically
significant numbers, or whether
one fire department rescued
one cat from one tree, which
has given rise to
the subsequent
legend.
Una: I can’t
imagine fire departments
like doing it. I
found two cat rescue
attempts where the
firefighters were accidentally
electrocuted
by power lines. There’s
also the expense—for example, the
fire department in Kansas City, Kansas,
calculated it spent $57.26 on gas responding
to 14 cat-in-tree calls in one year. But
the fact remains that they do it. I found
news accounts of cat rescues in 34 states
(some of which admittedly involved venues
other than trees), the most impressive of
which involved a tabby that was brought
down safely from 100 feet up an evergreen
tree in Hayward, Calif.
However, it would be unwise to
assume that the fire department is going
to use advanced cat-rescue techniques.
Firefighters in Okinawa, Japan, earlier this
year decided the best way to deal with a
feline up a 60-foot tree was to grab a chain
saw and lop off the section the cat was
clinging to. When a Tennessee woman’s cat
was stuck in a pine tree, firefighters gave
her two options: They could blast it out
with a hose or shake the tree until the cat
fell out. When asked how option B was any
different from the cat’s just falling out on
its own, one firefighter answered, “Neither
is real different, ma’am. Just quicker.”
So there you go, Dave. Cats do, in fact, get trapped in trees, and if you ask the fire department to do something about it, well, “rescue” might not be the best description of the ensuing operation. But they’ll probably show up.
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