KOCHI: In a heart-warming tale of compassion, animal-rescue activists, the fire force, and Kochi Metro Rail Ltd (KMRL) authorities on Sunday launched an operation to rescue a stray cat that had been stranded for days atop a metro pillar near the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium.
However, their over six-hour-long effort proved futile as the terrified feline retreated into a remote space in one of the girders. The rescue was abandoned by 5.15pm. It is expected to resume after 11.30pm, once all metro service operations are wrapped up for the day.
At 4.44pm, KMRL even turned off the power supply, suspending the metro service for 17 minutes, to facilitate the rescue.
This is the third such instance of cats getting stranded on metro pillars. Gandhi Nagar fire force officials said a cat was stuck on pillar 556 more than a week ago, and their attempts to rescue the animal proved in vain.
“A hydraulic crane made available by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) was used for the rescue. But the cat kept moving into gaps in the girder, making it impossible for us to reach it,” said a fire force official.
Officials left fish and water on the pillar for the cat, which local auto rickshaw drivers named Subash, after a character in the real-life movie Manjummel Boys who ends up falling in the Guna Caves in Tamil Nadu.
Meanwhile, rescue personnel had a lucky escape when their crane malfunctioned and hydraulic fluid spilled onto the road.
SPCA Ernakulam president T K Sajeev said cats often get trapped atop metro pillars when they are chased away by security personnel at stations.