One of the few "lighter sides" of being a paramedic. They had to rescue a cat who got stuck in a tree after it was being chased by an angry dog.
I will never forget this incident as long as I live. This happened not long after I became a paramedic, and I am still ragged on by this day by my fellow paramedics/EMT's.
We were hanging about the firestation, our "home away from home": when we were not at our individual houses, we spent our days at the local fire house, and we lived together, ate together, played cards, watched tv, or read the newspaper together, and we also played practical jokes on one another, to lighten our moods between calls. But whenever the tones sounded, we were ready to spring into action at a moment's notice, and this story in which I am about to share with you now was no exception.
We were looking forward to a nice, quiet Sunday, with no problems to deal with, no sick or injured people to care for, when the tones sounded. We immediately threw on our gear, got into the fire truck, and waited for the dispatcher's message.
Imagine our surprise when we found out that the call was because a cat was stuck in a tree. This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I became a paramedic: I was so sure we would be saving a little kid's life or heroically rescuing an unconscious man from a burning building; here, there was this cat stuck up a tree, and we were called to rescue it.
The caller was a sweet little old lady with blue hair who couldn't have been more than four and a half feet tall. She was really tiny, and she had a voice like sandpaper. Her little kitty was stuck in a tree, she said, and she wanted us to rescue her baby.
Whereupon, we got our ladder and we set out to rescue this poor, trapped, scared little kitten who was still in the tree. But what we saw was no little kitty: it was a baby lion.
I still remember looking at my partner and mouthing, "O, Crud!" Yet we set out to attempt to rescue this woman's "pet". She had been robbed on several occasions, but she decided to take matters into her own hands by getting a lion, only this lion was a cub. Still, he would eventually grow into a big lion, and who knows what he would be like when he got to be an adult, I remember thinking. She was scared to death of guns, so she decided to go one step further by getting an exotic animal like a lion to protect her property and her life.
The "kitty cat" had apparently been chased up the tree by an angry Great Dane after it caught the "kitten" nosing around its yard; and here we were. We tried to entice it out of the tree by gently calling "Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty" and holding a can of sardines, but the poor creature was scared shitless. It started growling, and its eyes narrowed into slits as it glared angrily at us. It wanted no part of us, and each time we tried to get closer, to where we could nab it, it would hiss and spit, and we would then have to figure out another way to get it out of the tree.
We tried for over an hour to get this thing out of the tree (but to no avail: the lion cub was getting angrier and angrier by the minute), but the woman insisted that we keep on trying on rescuing her "Simba" out of the tree. Suddenly, without warning, the lion cub swung a paw at us, claws sheathed, and it snagged my shirt, by the shoulder. It left a painful, nasty gash; but I was close enough to where I could grab it. I grabbed the snarling, growling critter by the back of the neck, and he was soon spinning around in my arms, yowling, growling, and making unpleasant cat noises, noises that I still hear in my sleep to this day, and I threw it to my partner, who caught it in a burlap bag. The woman thanked us profusely, and soon, she was trying to pacify her "baby". I don't know where in the world this crackpot woman got a lion cub, but it sure made for some excitement. I looked down, only, to my horror, to see the front of my shirt covered in blood, and I was dismayed to find a horrific, nearly foot long scratch on my arm. It looked (and felt) nasty, and my arm was killing me.
I ended up being the one who needed treatment, and to this day, my fellow paramedics/firefighters who were on call with me that day refuse to stop teasing me about that "sweet little kitten up the tree" that I helped rescue, and now my arm carries the testimony of that day: I still have a nice, long scar on my arm, and I still can hear the bone-chilling yowls, growls, and hisses of that demon cat that nearly got me.
Karen
This was a great write, love what you did with this piece
God BLess
Michelle~
Reviewed by Judy Lloyd
12/8/2004
Geez this reminds me of a bear that was on a stake out one time that I sat with the sheriff waiting for a search party to come back through. He was gorgeous and we had a bag of marshmallows that we tossed out in the road. The bear went for it and we exited post haste. I wonder if that cat got bigger can you image him giving the dog a heart attack?
I will never forget this incident as long as I live. This happened not long after I became a paramedic, and I am still ragged on by this day by my fellow paramedics/EMT's.
