Tuesday, June 8, 2010

the cat lives on

Frank from Fort Frances offered a useful piece of information the other day. He told me that in all his many years as a firefighter, he's never seen a cat skeleton in a tree. This is good news and bad news.

The good news is that I have ammunition (figuratively speaking) to handle the next cat call. In fact, I'm already rehearsing my "say no to cats" speech:

"I know you are concerned about poor Fifi ma'am, but let me assure you that there is no scientific evidence to prove that cats ever die in trees."

The bad news is that now I feel like an idiot. After many years of soul-searching, I finally resolved the question of whether we should respond to cat-in-tree incidents. I took the plunge, made the fateful decision, set a precedent. I rescued a cat, only to learn that, ultimately, they always figure how to get down by themselves, without any help from intrepid firefighters. It shows once again the need for doing a proper risk/benefit analysis before committing resources. I hereby return to my original position: Just say no to cats in trees. Period. Really, I mean it this time.

At least until the next distraught cat lover calls, and I wonder why we have those ladders on the trucks if we rarely use them, and maybe Frank just never saw the cat skeletons up there, and did he actually climb every single tree in Fort Frances, and if not, how did he prove his theory, and, and . . .

I'd better put a little more work into that risk analysis . . .

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I'm team-teaching the very first Volunteer Module A course to be held at Thunder Bay Protective and Emergency Services Training Centre (affectionately called PEST) this weekend. I may get another post in tomorrow evening, but no promises.

1 comment:

  1. Relax, Tim. We all know you did it for the owner, not the cat!

    ReplyDelete

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