Dear Editor:
Re: No help for stranded cat, Letters to the editor, Burnaby NOW, Aug. 17.
On behalf of B.C. Hydro, I would like to extend our apologies to the Love family for the loss of their cat, Precious.
Like the Love family, I share my house with a cat named Addison, who is a lively member of my family and has given us much joy. While it's true that, for safety reasons, we are not able to respond to distress calls about pets up power poles in the middle of the night, our preferred approach is to send somebody out in the morning to assess the situation.
In the meantime, we do ask the pet owner to try to coax the animal down off of the pole with food or treats. To safely remove a cat from a power pole is a tricky situation: the power line needs to be de-energized (which causes an outage to many houses) and a power line technician needs to go up in a bucket truck to attempt to rescue the pet.
Very often, the cat is terrified, and a rescue attempt could actually make the situation worse.
We will review the Love family's experience with our staff to try and avoid a similar tragedy in the future.
David Lebeter, B.C. Hydro vice-president of field operations
