Dramatic scenes at Kalyan: Cat lands 45ft up on a coconut tree in , rescued day later

MUMBAI: A cat found itself stranded atop a coconut tree in Kalyan (east) and was rescued by firemen on Thursday, a day after it had mysteriously landed up there. No one knows how it found its way beneath the canopy of palm fronds, but its constant yowling alerted residents around Lokvatika Housing Society, near Lokgram locality.
The tree stands three or four storeys above ground where this stray feline was perched, said Abhishek Chaube, a resident of the housing society.Chaube called up the fire brigade after the building watchman alerted him. “It’s very likely that the cat was being chased by stray dogs…,” Chaube said, adding that the feline could have clawed its way up to escape the dogs.
A resident of an apartment on the first floor of a building situated across from where the tree stands had spotted the feline on Wednesday, said watchman Pandurang Pawar.
Personnel from Kalyan (east) fire brigade, who have been attending to a flurry of emergency calls of tree falls and other rain-related calamities in recent days, rescued the cat Thursday afternoon. The cat had parked itself some 40-45 feet high up.
“The ladder kept slipping off the tree trunk…,” fire brigade station officer Bhausaheb Pagar said, explaining why it took more than an hour to rescue the animal. The cat appeared fatigued and there was a bit of initial resistance, but one of the firemen gently held it by the scruff, and scooped it out, bringing it down to safety. Once it made a safe landing on terra firma, the cat darted away to its familiar turf.