About 20-25 years ago in UK the firemen were on strike and army personnel took over their duties. One crew of soldiers rescued a cat, the little old lady was so pleased that she gave them tea and scones. As they left they ran over the cat and killed it. There were many reports and TV interviews about this incident, I’m sure it did happen.
Welcome to the Straight Dope, Nigel, we’re glad to have you here.
First, I’m providing a link to the column in question. Yeah, it’s front page now, but in a week or so it will disappear into the Archives, so the link makes it easier for other readers to find. And keeps us all on the same page, avoids people just re-stating what Cecil already said. Etc. SO, here’s the link: Do fire departments actually rescue cats from trees? - The Straight Dope
Now, since your comment is about Cecil’s regular column, I’m moving it from the forum that’s dedicated to the Straight Dope Chicago columns. I know, it’s confusing, but no sweat, and if you stick around (as I hope you will) and read and post, you’ll get the hang of it in no time.
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Perhaps this was indeed a true story.
At any rate, the domestic cat’s wild ancestor is the Libyan wild cat, a desert cat. Not too many trees for it to climb in it’s native habitat, so it probably did not develop lots of tree-climbing skill.
Not in Arlington, Virginia, which is the only real world experience I have with it. Our stoner neighbors’ cat was stuck in a tree for a couple of days, mewing constantly, and we called the fire department, and they told it’s a myth that fire departments do that, and the cat’ll come down when he’s hungry enough.
Which he did.
This was about 1994.
Snopes has a little blurb on it - they neither confirm nor debunk the report.
As a general rule, my department will not get a cat out of a tree. However, this summer we did once (I didn’t go) for an old lady who is a widow of a former member. FWIW, the cat was dead, up in the branches, necessitating the recovery.
My dad knew a fireman who was fond of telling worried little old ladies, “Ma’am, no one’s ever seen a cat skeleton up in a tree. Fluffy will come down when he has to.”
And besides, Mr. Incredible probably isn’t likely to be driving by (see beginning at 2:40): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xXJ11J2SSM&feature=related
Is it necessary for the fire department to rescue a cat that’s stuck in a tree?
Can a cat get stuck in a tree seems to be the key question. That answer is yes - even though I was a non-believer at first. My wife “focused” my attention to a mewing cat in our front yard tree. I maintained the usual “it will come down with it’s hungry” attitude. The next day, it was still in the same location - a hollow in the tree about 12 feet off the ground. After hours of ladder work and the precision use of power tools, I discovered the cat had caught it’s tail in a “V” and was truly stuck. No amount of backing up by the cat was freeing that tail. With very little space to maneuver, I finally freed the cat which sported a hairless section of her tail for days. (leave that alone, Cecil!) So, yes indeed, a cat can get stuck. I am convinced this poor kitty would have died without intervention and then those know-it-alls would have the chance to see a cat skeleton in a tree.
Unlike the usual story, however, it was not necessary for the tax supported fire department to rescue this cat. I did it myself.
I always associated this myth with the kinder, simpler days when cops helped kids and the elderly cross the street, a milkman delivered to the door, and fireman would drop by to get kids or cats out of trees.
The legal liabilities alone would gave modern fire departments concern. These days every action has a cost analysis to it. I’m sure some accountant could claim exorbitant costs with dispatching a ladder truck, the firemen’s time, and the associated paperwork.
I tire of the adage “I’ve never seen a cat skeleton up in a tree”, as it indicates a lack of either critical thinking or experience. I’ve never seen a bird, squirrel, or possum skeleton in a tree either, so should I assume none ever die in trees? In the rare case where a cat would die in a tree, it’s likely to either fall out of the tree, or else be taken by predators or scavengers. Around here, a red-tailed hawk would probably let a cat corpse alone for all of 5 minutes before it came in for a meal.
I’ve also seen a cat with its upper leg stuck in a branch “V”, along the lines of what mdoyle posted in here earlier. In my case the cat was only 5 feet off the ground and very easy to reach.
While almost all cats may get out of trees on their own eventually, there are complications. If the cat gets weak enough or scared enough it may jump from too high a height and be injured or die. Or it may suffer long-term damage due to dehydration.
The US Fire Administration keeps track of this sort of thing, through the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS). Each reportable incident has a type code. The category under which cat rescues would fall is “Service Calls”, which comprised 7% of reportable incidents in 2004 according to their web site.
Service calls include the following categories: “Person in distress”, “Water problems”, “Smoke, odor problem”, “Public service assistance”, “Unauthorized burning”, as well as “Animal problem or rescue”. Animal problems are further divided into “Animal problem, other”, “Animal problem”, or “Animal rescue” (one wonders what the difference between the first two are).
The data I have access to show 6.5% service calls, but this is necessarily a subset of the national data. Of these service calls, just over one in ten involved animals, and of those only about 3% mentioned the word “cat” or “feline” in the narrative. The vast majority (85%) of animal-related incidents involved a snake.
So to the extent that my data are representative of the nation as a whole, only about one in five thousand reportable incidents involve the rescue or removal of a cat.
The domestic cat’s wild ancestor is Felis sylvestris lybica, but that does not mean it comes from the desert. It is known in English as the “African Wildcat”, but even that is misleading, for its range is considerably greater than that, covering, in fact, most of the Roman Empire.
I suspect that in cases where fire departments do rescue animals, boredom may be the motivating factor more than anything else. Given a choice between cleaning the station for the third time and getting a cat out of a tree, what are you going to do? There are also a fair number of fire departments that rely on donations for at least part of their budget, and being seen rescuing a cat is probably good PR.
Deleted because someone already made my point.
The phrase, "Ma’am, nobody has ever seen a dead cat up a tree,’’ must be part of some training manual for firefighters. Too bad it’s not true. I have seen a dead cat up a tree, and it is not a pretty sight. In the summer of 2006, while mowing my backyard in Olympia, Wash., I noticed a small puddle of black, sticky goo at the base of a big maple. It smelled pretty bad. Looking up, I spotted the source of the goo, about 30 feet up, in a crotch of the tree. It was a cat, it was dead, and it stayed there for several weeks, pecked at by crows, until a storm came through and blew the tattered corpse to the ground, where I lifted it delicately with a stick and, with a quick prayer for its feline soul, flung it into the woods.
“I found two cat rescue attempts where the firefighters were accidentally electrocuted by power lines.”
Excepting stories about executions and a vanishingly small number of homicides, I submit that “accidentally” is always redundant when referring to electrocution 
Margays and Clouded Leopards are two small wild cats that have little difficulty climbing up or down trees. Their ankles can supposedly turn 180 degrees (I can’t even imagine how weird that would look). Margays are sometimes kept as pets, perhaps they wouldn’t need the fire brigade.
In rural New Hampshire the volunteer fire department declined my request to rescue our cat from a large tree in our yard. The dispatcher’s reason was, “Have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?” I had to admit I had not. Later I called to make a final point. “You’ll never see a cat skeleton in a tree because the wind blows the poor creature off his perch.” After a 30-foot fall, Spot suffered a broken nose and had used up the first of his nine lives.
My husband, a Firefighter, does, in fact, rescue cats and other animals from any manner of situations, including being stuck in trees.
Cecil was just explicitly ruling out the possibility that the cats were faking being stuck in the tree to act as bait in a fiendish feline-designed electric firefighter trap. Kind of like those spiders in the Far Side cartoon with the web at the bottom of the slide: “If we pull this off, we’ll eat like kings!”