“The Bungled Rescue of the Cat”

Here’s another dead-catter, one of that class of apocryphal stories involving a dead cat. I’ve heard it several times from sources in different locations.

The latest person to send me this particular cat story is The Very Rev. John T. Shone, M.A., Dean of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Diocese of St. Andrews, Perth, Australia. (I quote directly from the reverend’s impressive letterhead.) He remembers having heard it told in several regions of Britain.

“The background facts are these,” Dean Shone writes. “British fire engines are always painted bright red. But about ten years ago there was a national strike by the Fire Brigade Union, and while the strike was on, emergency cover was provided by soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

“They could not use the regular fire engines and had to use government reserve engines, which were painted green. The engines became known as ‘Green Goddesses,’ named after a popular TV personality.

“The story goes that a little old lady, during the strike, found her cat had got up a tree and couldn’t get down. She dialed the emergency number, and a jolly squad of soldiers arrived with a green goddess and rescued the cat.

“The old lady was so delighted that she invited the soldiers in for a cup of tea.

“After a while the soldiers merrily waved goodbye, got in their green goddess, and drove off—killing the cat which was then sitting underneath the fire engine.

“Although the strike has been over for years, the story is still told, always as having happened locally,” Reverend Shone closes. “I have never heard the story told in relation to the regular fire brigade.”

Well, I have. In fact, I had never heard of a Green Goddess until I read this letter. I’ve heard lots of versions that attribute the same bungled cat rescue to ordinary fire departments. Usually they’re set in one part or another of Great Britain or, less commonly, in the United States.

It may well be that such an accident really did occur. But if so, the many subsequent repetitions of the story have adapted it to different times and places.

Several aspects of “The Bungled Rescue of the Cat” smell strongly of legend. For one, there’s the matter of actual behavior versus legendary behavior of felines and humans. Few real-life cats will stay up in a tree for long, and few fire departments will respond to cat-up-a-tree calls until the pet has been given a long, long time to come down on its own. Furthermore, most cats will dart from beneath a parked vehicle as soon as it is started up. It’s unusual for a normally alert cat to be killed by a car or truck in this way.

I’m sure I’ll hear from cat owners disputing these generalizations. But even if such an incident could happen, I still doubt the truth of the story. The notion of a cat caught helplessly in a tree is most familiar to us as a proverbial plot—we all know the situation, but we’ve never actually seen such a thing. And the neat irony of the rescuers compounding the very problem they set out to solve sounds extremely predictable to me.

The legend seems to me to recycle the motif from a common legend about a mother who, rushing to take one injured child to an emergency room, backs her car over a second toddler playing behind the car.

It could happen, but did it? Probably not—at least not at all the times and in all the places to which the story has been attributed.

In his letter, Dean Shone remarked, “In my profession we spend a lot of time listening to people.” That’s true of folklorists as well as clergymen. I am ready to listen to anyone who sends me further versions of “The Bungled Rescue” story or possible facts behind it.