CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn —The past 72 hours have been quite eventful for 8-month-old kitten, Reese’s.
After escaping through a first floor window inside her family’s home at the Kingsborough Houses in Crown Heights on Sunday, the feline climbed atop a 60-foot tree in the complex’s courtyard.
It became a problem when she couldn’t get down.
For three days, Reese’s owner Alexandra Sanchez kept tabs on the kitten, even as a snow storm blew into the area Monday morning.
“I was up all night there with her [through] the snow,” she told PIX11 News. “She cried.”
What added on to the situation, the saga all started on April 1 — April Fool’s Day.
“They thought it was a joke, they were like ‘oh April fools, it’s a cat in a tree really?’ and I’m like for real, I am for real,” Sanchez recalled, describing how 911 dispatchers did not take her claim seriously. “They hung up on me three times.”
After a handful attempts by residents, animal advocates and even responding NYPD officers equipped with a ladder, Reese’s was just too far out of reach.
When all else failed, the New York City Fire Department brought out the big guns Tuesday, pulling the kitty to safety via fire truck bucket.
In those those days Reese’s inadvertently became a celebrity within the community, connecting complete strangers, all who were concerned about her welfare.
Brian Hull, director of the Crown Heights Animal Rescue, was one of them.
The animal advocate says he was ready to scale the tree if the FDNY couldn’t get Reese’s. Risking his safety, he said, was an afterthought.
“A lot of people don’t realize you know, everyone thinks that cats don’t have a soul,” Hull said. “it does. it has feelings, it shares happiness, sorrow it goes through the whole nine yards, just like we do.”
Outside of being just a little dehydrated, the cat was surprisingly in good condition.
