Firefighters flooded with calls about cat rescue
Published: January 2, 2006
Missoula firefighters have become heroes to animal lovers around the world, and their growing and sudden fan club is inundating the downtown fire hall with thank-yous for saving a cat from the icy Clark Fork River.
City Fire Chief Tom Steenberg joked Thursday that he needs to hire extra staff to answer the never-ending “cat calls” that keep the phones ringing at Station 1 on East Pine Street.
All of the callers, he said, have a simple message: Thanks for saving the little calico cat, and thank you for diverting the hand of a deliberate cruel fate.
Early Tuesday morning, Station 1 firefighters deployed their ice rescue equipment to save the cat, which was stranded on ice in the middle of the Clark Fork, trapped in a cage weighted down by a large rock.
Someone had put the cat in the cage, along with a 16-pound rock and tossed it over the California Street footbridge. But instead of landing in the water, as apparently intended, the cage hit the ice, bounced several times and came to a stop in a puddle of slush.
Using a rescue boat, firefighters retrieved the cat and brought it back to the fire station, where they dried it off and fed it leftover Christmas turkey and a bowl of milk.
Despite the harrowing ordeal, the cat was friendly and enjoyed being held by its newfound firefighter friends.
By the end of his shift, one of the cat’s saviors, firefighter Josh Macrow, decided to keep the cat, so took it to a veterinarian before bringing it home to his family. Macrow didn’t want the cat to go through any more trauma, and his 12-year-old daughter Taylor had long wished for a cat.
The Missoulian published the story and a photograph of Macrow and the cat, which he named Lucky, and The Associated Press put the tale and photo on its news wires.
By Thursday, the rest of the world learned of the Missoula Fire Department’s rescue and the station was flooded with phone calls and e-mails.
Many were alerted to the news by CNN, which carried the story on its Web site and broadcast the story throughout the day, along with the Missoulian photo.
People from Tennessee, Florida, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Hawaii, California and the Netherlands have contacted the firefighters to say “job well done” and offer money to pay for Lucky’s vet visit.
There’s good reason to believe there will be more than enough money to refund Macrow for Lucky’s medical bill, Steenberg said, and what is left will be donated to the Humane Society of Western Montana in Missoula.
Macrow couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday about his sudden celebrity status, but told his boss that Lucky is thriving in her new home.
Steenberg said all of the attention these past few days has been interesting, if a bit distracting.
“We’re just doing our job,” the chief said. “We are happy that we’ve got the tools and firefighters with the training to go out in the river and operate this kind of rescue safely.
“It takes a lot of training and specialized gear to do this kind of thing and we train constantly.”
Over the years, firefighting has become a technical field, where firefighters train for hazardous waste emergencies and complicated high-rise and confined-space rescues.
“We really aren’t in the business of getting cats out of trees anymore,” Steenberg said. “On the other hand, a can of tuna fish has always worked.
“In this instance, with a caged cat out on the ice, tuna fish isn’t going to work and we have a lot of people here at the station with big hearts,” he said. “We can’t ignore a situation like that.”
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