Woman Tries to Rescue Cat, Needs Rescuing

Firefighters typically wouldn't rescue a cat caught in a tree. But they did on Sunday ... in order to rescue the woman who tried to save it. "Normally, we recommend they just let animals come down by themselves," said the deputy fire chief in Erie, Pa., after 21-year-old Tara Dennis was unable to get back down the tree. "I love animals," she explains to the Erie Times-News. "I couldn't let the cat stay up there" after hearing its cries for a couple of days.

So she says she climbed a fence, got on a garage roof, and then scrambled onto the tree's lowest branch, eventually climbing an estimated 40 feet. After she stowed the cat safely in her shirt and started to climb down, she realized she, too, needed rescuing; a neighbor called 911. The fire department used a 28-foot ladder to first get the unidentified cat, then Dennis, back down to earth. (In Wisconsin, a woman broke into a shelter in an attempt to reclaim her cats.)