FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — When a woman heard kitten crying from a storm drain, she called police to help make the rescue. Little did police know, this was one kitten who would not come out easily. When Officer Gilworth and Officer Wagner arrived at the Belmont apartment complex at 1 a.m., they could see the kitten in the storm drain. The first thing the officers did was call in firefighters to remove the manhole cover.
“Officer Gilworth climbed into the drain to rescue the kitten. The kitten, however, was frightened and ran down a narrow, 150-foot horizontal pipe that runs to the other side of the road. The Fire Department then removed a manhole cover on the other side of the street and Officer Gilworth descended again, this time with cat food and milk,” Fredericksburg Police Department spokeswoman Sarah Kirkpatrick said. “Despite the cat food and milk, the kitten was still too frightened to come to Officer Gilworth.”
That’s when firefighters decided to run water through the pipe to coerce the kitten into coming out.
“Officer Gilworth also felt the kitten may have been scared of his flashlight so he turned his it off. The Fire Department ran water gently through the pipe and moments later the kitten was within arm’s reach of Officer Gilworth. The kitten was successfully rescued,” Kirkpatrick said.
A neighborhood who witnessed the rescue took the kitten home.