Video shows Horry firefighters rescuing Foxy the cat in tree. It’s not the first for crews
The first words Mona Moore Stamper said when she called Horry County Fire Rescue’s non-emergency line was, “This is not a prank. Do you still get cats out of trees?”
Apparently, they do.
And for Stamper, it was the purr-fect solution to getting her cat Foxy back safe.
Horry County fire crews responded to Stamper’s Little River home about 8:30 a.m. Monday with a ladder and “kitten mittens” ready to retrieve the cat.
Foxy, an inside cat, had gotten out of the house on Sunday. Stamper looked for the cat, shaking a bag of cat food to get him to come. But when she heard “Mrrowww, mrroww,” she looked up and saw the cat had climbed up the tall tree, Stamper said.
And while he managed to get up the tree, he couldn’t figure out how to get back down, she said.
Stamper said she spent all night going back to the tree to check on the cat. She even went to her roof, shaking a bag of cat food to try to get him to come down. “I was just getting no where,” Stamper said.
Stamper took video of the rescue. She can be heard shaking a bag of cat food and trying to coax the cat down. She also tells firefighters, “I didn’t even know you guys did this, thank you.”
But when asked if firefighters still rescue cats, spokesperson Tony Casey responded by text, “Absolutely.”
There isn’t an exact number of how many cat-stuck-in-tree calls the Horry County Fire Rescue has responded to, but Casey said that crews receive about one every two months on average.
Stamper said when the fireman reached for Foxy, he just relaxed in his arms.
“They were just so nice and so considerate,” Stamper said. “I felt bad. I felt like an idiot calling the fire department.”
Foxy is an older cat and a rescue. Stamper has had him for a couple of years now, she said.
Stamper is glad the firemen were able to get Foxy down, crediting them with being so kind.
“They were very caring with the cat,” she said. “They took their time and talked to the cat.”
This story was originally published October 16, 2023 at 11:03 AM.
