I love cats, but they never need to be rescued from a tree. Nobody ever found a dead cat in one.

dumbass. call the firefighters.

Sorry if this sounds callous, but when I read the last line: "The cat was still in the tree." I really did laugh out loud.

Accidental, presumably swift death in the attempt to rescue a creature in distress is a noble way to go.

@1: That's right. They find the dead cats under the trees.

@1: This is true, but you have to be prepared to hand out earplugs to all and sundry, because there's always somebody who can't ignore the pitiful mewling and calls you heartless for not doing something about it (and it's often your spouse or child, meaning you can just use the earplugs yourself)

Bronx Park East runs along Bronx Park, the police said.

Has the NYT really fallen so far that they needed a police source to confirm this?

(Also, how many times can you cram 'the police said" into one blockquote?)

@1: about 12 years ago, i paid $75 to get a guy (PRO-ROVER) to lumberjack 40' up a neighbor's slender conifer and haul my cat out. kitteh was being dived bombed by a murder of crows for hours on end, and he was terrified, screaming all day and night. plus the neighbors were all a-twitter.

sometimes, cats need to be rescued. but not by joe public.

@ 5, no they don't.

@ 6, that's when you say what I said @ 1.

@ 8, well, there's the occasional, very rare situation like that every now and then...

@9,

Cats can get themselves in situations where they then can't get themselves down. Like my neighbor's cat who got trapped on another neighbor's roof while they were out of town. There's nothing wrong with helping out an animal in distress. There is something wrong with assuming a single tree branch will support your body weight.