It’s not always just the fire department that helps save a stuck kitten. Sometimes it’s your local plumber.
That was the case last week for Dan Meldrum with Roto-Rooter Cranbrook, when he got a call that a kitten had fallen into a sewer pipe.
“I put a camera down the one line but didn’t see a kitten in there,” said Meldrum.
He noticed an old water well that used to service a mobile home on the property.
“We shoved our camera down there and all of a sudden I see these blue kitten eyes looking at me,” he added. “Now the rescue really started.”
He said they were trying any idea they could think of to get it out.
“The one lady that was there, she crocheted a little rope ladder and we’d stuff it down there and this kitten would try to grab onto it.”
Meldrum said any rescue attempt they tried was made difficult because of how small the cat was.
“It was hard because the kitten didn’t really know what was going on,” he added.
“She had just got weened from her mom, so she was really tiny. She was probably as heavy as a set of keys.”
Someone online suggested using a Shop-Vac to suck the cat out, but they couldn’t get to the spot they needed because an old barn was in the way.
They were able to cut a small hole in the floor and lower a little girl with the Shop-vac nozzle down into the hole.
“We managed to hook the vacuum onto her back legs and then pulled her right out,” said Meldrum.
The kitten got a new middle name from the whole ordeal, now going as Rocky Rooter.
“In today’s day and age it’s always great to have these stories with everything that’s going on,” added Meldrum.
Dennis Walker interview with Dan Meldrum
