Cat and Friends Are No Longer Poles Apart

The cat on a hot high wire returned to earth Monday afternoon, thanks to the efforts of Anaheim’s public utility and a group that befriends felines.

With the power turned off, the neighborhood dogs safely put away and a gaggle of reporters recording the event, Anaheim utility “trouble-shooter” Tom Cordaro climbed a 50-foot utility pole and used a stick with an attached noose to rescue the gray kitty that had been stuck for at least 3 1/2 days perilously close to 12,000-volt lines.

Cordaro quickly put the cat in a cage held a few feet below by fellow lineman Bill Tempel.

“This one ended up positive. He choked a little bit, but he’s one happy kitty now,” said Ed Alario, assistant general manager for operations at the utility.

The cat, apparently a stray, had perched high on the pole in the corner of Ken and Chris Maziol’s London Place backyard, possibly chased up there by any of a number of neighborhood dogs. Chris Maziol and the couple’s 3-year-old son, Joseph, first noticed it Friday morning.

Ever since then, Ken Maziol said, they had been trying to persuade someone from county animal control services, the city Fire Department or the utility to help the plaintively mewing cat. But throughout the weekend, all they got were excuses, not rescues, Ken Maziol said.

However, a newspaper account apparently helped turn the tide. The Maziols’ phone rang non-stop Monday.

About 30 calls poured into Anaheim City Hall, and the utility department dispatched a crew. Feline & Canine Friends Inc., a nonprofit group that assists in rescues, offered its expertise and cat-snaring equipment. The county’s animal control services--an agency Maziol had tried to reach all weekend to no avail--also called but was told that the Friends group had provided the necessary help.

At first, Maziol said, the utility workers tried to lure the cat to a lower part of the pole by perching a dish of chicken and water on a lower arm of the pole. When that didn’t work, they turned to serious rescue techniques.

Normally, the utility would have used a motorized basket to lift a worker to the top of the pole, but because the cat had chosen a spot surrounded by backyards, the utility could not get the necessary piece of equipment close enough. Instead, said utility spokesman Ray Merchant, they realized that they would have to climb the pole.

They “de-energized” a transformer, shutting down power to about 15 homes in the immediate area, although the main line above it was still humming with 12,000 volts, Merchant said. The main line was then covered to protect both cat and rescuer. Had the cat reached the high voltage lines, it would have caused a flash that could have endangered the linemen and dropped live wires into the backyards near the pole, he said.

“If that cat had touched two lines on the top of the pole, it would have been all over,” Alario said.

When the linemen first climbed up, the cat did in fact scramble up a little higher. But Cordaro was able to snare it with the special pole-and-noose, provided by the Feline & Canine Friends. After a tug, he managed to pull the cat’s claws off the pole.

“It stuck for a bit to the pole,” Maziol said. “It had all four (paws) wrapped around it.”

Len Liberio, director of animal control for the county, said cats usually do come down from trees and poles on their own, when they get hungry enough and after people tie up their dogs and remove all threats from below.

“That may sound relaxed and laid back, but nature normally runs its course,” Liberio said. “A cat that hasn’t been declawed can come down a high pole as well as it went up.”

But this cat’s lengthy stay, coupled with its precarious position, called for other action, he said. Still, county animal services did not have any equipment long enough to reach the cat without the assistance of another agency, he said. The animal workers could have used their dart rifle, which shoots sedatives, but the force of the dart probably would have knocked the cat off its too-high perch, Liberio said. When they heard that the nonprofit group was already on the scene to assist, the animal service workers backed off, he said.

“I’m glad it ended happily. This one was a toughie,” Liberio said. “Mountain lions are easier.”

Maziol, an engineering manager at Rockwell who coincidentally is working on a new computer-aided engineering product called PAWS, said he was “astounded” by all the calls from concerned people and the sudden outpouring of help on Monday, after a dearth of assistance over the weekend.

“It went from nothing to where I couldn’t beat them off with a stick,” he said.

Although two parties called the Maziols to say they thought the cat was theirs, the caged kitty was taken away by the Feline & Canine Friends, who will attempt to find the owner, Maziol said.

If no one claims the cat, the Maziols may ask for it back.

“That’s a possibility,” he said. “I was thinking of that.”