Three cats imprisoned in the concrete channel of the Los Angeles River were saved by heroic volunteers who worked long hours in the dark to rescue these helpless felines.
The long drama began when the volunteers at People and Cats Together (PACT) of Redondo Beach, California received a report of several cats who were trapped in a half-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River channel. The video they posted on YouTube explains that the channel runs 48 miles from Canoga Park to Long Beach. Its steep walls mean that any unlucky animal that finds its way in will not be able to escape on its own. Rising run off can make the river a death trap.
The half-mile stretch where the cats were spotted is 50-feet wide with steep vertical walls, so the rescuers had their work cut out for them. They went to work, and lowered the food-baited cage traps into the river. When night fell, they kept a vigil, waiting for the sound of the cage door falling shut—the only way they had of knowing if a cat was safely secured in one of the cages. It took 14 days and a great deal of patience to rescue all three feral cats.
The video shows them lowering and raising the cage traps, and quietly celebrating the rescue of the frightened little cats threatened by rising waters. They acted just in time, since Los Angeles is getting much-needed rain early this year in advance of what many expect to be an El Nino winter.
