Cat rescued by chopper

by Peter de Graaf
When the Reynolds bought their cat on TradeMe she cost $200.
Last night the Kamo family spent more than $1000 rescuing it from a tree.
Lily, a tonkinese with a fondness for climbing, had to be plucked from 25m up a tree by a man suspended from a helicopter, after every other attempt to bring her back to earth failed. The alarm was raised after Lily failed to turn up for breakfast on Wednesday. That night the Reynolds tracked her down after hearing a pitiful howling from a taraire tree in the reserve behind their home.
Yesterday, Lily - bought after a previous cat met an untimely end in the garage door - still had no plans to come down, despite two, maybe three, days up the tree.
"She's going to be an expensive cat ... but we couldn't just leave her up there," Rebecca Reynolds said. First she tried luring Lily down with cat food. Then she called the Fire Service, but they didn't want to know. Then she tried hiring a crane, but it couldn't get up the walkway through the reserve. Finally, she called arborist Paul Gosling, who took one look at the spindly branches and decided climbing was out of the question. That left a helicopter as Lily's only hope. So, just as the light was fading, a Skywork chopper touched down on the field at nearby Kamo Primary School.
Mr Gosling harnessed himself to the chopper and was lowered into the treetops at the end of a 20m cable - and within minutes Lily was safely in his bag and making her way back to earth. There were emotional scenes as cat and family were reunited just after 7.15pm. Mrs Reynolds appeared lost for words; only the official owner Chris, 13, and the cat seemed unmoved.
"She'll be starving," Mrs Reynolds said. "She'll hoe into her food tonight."
Pilot Remco Coenra was still shaking his head as he flew back to base in Onerahi. "You get the odd bizarre job, but this is the weirdest so far," he mused. Mr Gosling said Mrs Reynolds had to be the most committed cat owner he'd seen. "It wasn't your average day at the office," he said.