The Kitten Rescue Attempt

The public service is a unit that often receives criticism. Almost everyone has a story about corruption, bribery and inefficiency of the public service. I guess in our daily lives, we tend to forget that there are good encounters with the public service as well.

This is my story.

On an early morning in 2005/06 (when I say early morning, I mean about 4am), I was sitting outside a 7-11 in Ampang with two friends, drinking beer. It was rather late, and I was quite tired, so when I heard a "mew" coming from the top of my head, I thought I was hearing things.

It was a shoplot. And one of my friends noted that just the day before, he heard a kitten and it sounded as though the kitten was trapped upstairs, by a ledge on one of the shoplots, and had no way out. Kittens are mischievous by nature, and it's no surprise that they can sometimes get themselves into trouble.

It was a Saturday night, or rather, an early Sunday morning. I looked up and tried searching for the kitten. We went to 7-11 and borrowed a torchlight and located the kitten. It was trapped and had no way of getting down.

There was a water cooler nearby, and its sibling, I assume, was hiding under it, mewing in fear. Fear for its own self, and for the other kitten, I assume. I tried coaxing it into my arms, and it slowly nestled itself into my arms, in search for some comfort, I believe. After it had calmed down a little, we decided we should try rescuing the other kitten.

We tried to get the trapped kitten to jump down; my friend carried me and I was high enough, almost reaching the kitten but with a distance of possibly almost a metre. I wanted it to jump to my arms, to safety. But it was too afraid.

So I took the other kitten, and tried to coax both of them down, thinking that perhaps they could find a way to find strength in each other again, and then the trapped kitten would jump to my arms, to be with the other kitten.

But it didn't.

So the next best thing to do, we thought, was to call the fire department. Yes, it was 4am, we were drunk, and we decided to call the fire department. Both my friends thought it was a better idea if I made the call, considering it might have been incredibly ridiculous if a drunken man made a call to the fire department at 4am on a Sunday morning reporting about a trapped kitten.

And so I did. It wasn't an easy phone call, because I had trouble describing the whole situation.

But what happened next was something we completely did not expect: The fire department arrived within 10 minutes in a fire truck.

What ensued next was a rescue mission that lasted two hours or more. It was daytime by the time it ended. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to rescue the kitten. Not even with the fire truck, because the ladder could not be angled at a position to not hit the billboard.

I must honestly say that I left with mixed feelings. I was upset, yes, by the fact that we didn't manage to rescue the kitten. But what made me feel better that fateful day was the fact that people cared. It may have seemed like a trivial matter, but they took the time to try. It took them two hours or more, climbing up the ladder, angling it this way and that way, and it wasn't easy because the kitten kept running away, into the building.

So it was actually quite heartening.

So I believe there are people out there in the public service who care about serving the public, and even in the tiniest of concerns, they see the significance of the issue. They saw how distressed I was, and I was begging them again and again, asking them not to give up. And they didn't.

Not for those two hours in the wee hours of the morning.

We left hopeful, not dejected.

And if you're wondering what happened to the kitten, on Monday, when my friend went to work, he stopped by at the shophouse, and went upstairs and managed to rescue the poor little thing. It was hungry and soaking wet, from the rain or other elements like pipewater and such, but the good thing is that it was rescued, after all.

So there ARE people who care.

Let's not trick ourselves into thinking that there aren't.

"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
- Anne Frank