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Photo by Eric Engman
Elliott, a 1-year-old tabby, sits about 40 feet up in a birch tree off of Emma Way as GVEA's Karm Singh reaches him in a bucket lift Tuesday morning, May 13, 2008. "He just doesn't want to come down, or he doesn't know how to get down," owner Janet Kidd said of her cat, which she rescued from the Fairbanks North Star Borough Animal Shelter last fall. Kidd returned home from work Monday evening and could hear Elliott meowing, but couldn't see him until she looked up. "I said 'Oh No! He's up there!'" Kidd suspects that Elliott was chased up the tree by a neighborhood dog. Golden Valley Electric Association employees Karm Singh and Russ Young came to the rescue, using a bucket lift on the back of their service truck to reach the cat and bring it down to safety. "Another day at the office," Singh, a 21-year veteran of GVEA, joked about helping the cat, adding that he's saved about a half-dozen felines from high places throughout the years and that they were already in the neighborhood for another job. The crew opted to use the bucket instead of ladders for safety reasons. "Once you get your hands full of cat, it's hard to climb down (the ladder)," Singh added.