10/11/2013 10-11 by CAD

Third day of rain here in the RVA on a three squad day so it shouldn't be busy right? A couple of sick outs and 2 officers assigned to a warrant sweep made for a thin crew.

Got my vehicle and the computer would not cooperate so I had to go see the computer guru who managed to get it up and running so I'm back in the game. Dropped off the Precinct's radar forks to Special Operations to get re-calibrated and hit the Wawa for my Gatorade.

At about 0930 I get a call to assist the citizen................

OK so I get there and they direct me to the side of the house to an area of dirt, bushes and some small trees and I can see a few small holes where they had been digging trying to get him out. They told me that the cat went into one of the holes about 6PM last night and they feel that it is stuck somewhere under ground. After a few minutes I head what I believed to be a muffled meow and it sounds like the cat is right where we are standing but under ground. I grab a shovel and start digging and as I'm digging I keep hearing the "meow" but now it sounds like it is in a different place so I figure the cat is moving under ground so we stop and start digging in another spot where we think it's coming from but we are having no luck.

After about an hour and a half of digging holes I sadly told the lady that I could do no more and that she might want to call a landscaping company who may have better tools that just shovels and excavate to the side and then dig parallel to the ground to hit the tunnel that the cat is in.

Now I'm all muddy and head over to the firehouse to clean up and run into 2 Lieutenants that I know and I ask them if they have access to a thermal imaging device and would they mind trying to help me out. Without hesitation they both grabbed some gear and followed me back to the house. Sad to say the thermal imaging device was not helpful since it would not penetrate the dirt so it was decided to start digging again. All three of us went at it full bore and as we dug we could hear the cat's "meow" which gave us more determinitation to keep digging because now we have a lot invested in this cat so we hammered on. We call in an Engine Company for some more man power and we dug. We dug a hole big enough to bury a car in and kept hearing the "meow's" but we had no luck finding him.

So now we are over 3 hours into the dig and still kept hearing sporadic "meow's" so we kept digging. At this point a plumber showed up with a pipe camera and as he was gettinig ready to insert it into one of the smaller holes we heard the cat again and at this exact moment someone looked up and spotted the cat in a tree right 50 feet above where we were digging.........................."you gotta be fucking kidding me" was all I could say and I believe that everybody there was thinking the same thing.

We stopped and laughed and just stood there and looked up at the cat who was probably up there laughing at us but I didn't care because the cat was alright. One of the firemen said "did you ever see a cat skeleton in a tree?" "No because he will eventually come down"

With that we all shuffled back to our cars and left. I had to go back to the firehouse and get cleaned again and spend the rest of the shift with semi muddy shoes and pants but I felt good.

I'm going to stop by tomorrow and check on them and see if the cat climbed down, maybe I'll take a picture with him if he lets me.

All in all a good shift