Cat stuck on utility pole rescued by LP&L

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - A cat is safe and sound with his owner after spending a day and a half on top of a power pole in Lubbock.

Priscilla Justice first noticed her cat, Ash, had escaped her home Saturday night. She set out his food, but didn’t hear his pitter-patter coming to the bowl.

“He sleeps in the beds. He is not an outside cat. It’s very unfamiliar territory when he goes outside,” Priscilla said.

She began searching outside, and around 1 a.m., she heard his meow.

“As I go back out to the alley, I’m by the dumpster, and I start looking up in the trees and out of the blue I just see a glimpse of white,” she said.

She looked up in the alley to find Ash all the way up on top of a utility pole. Priscilla didn’t know what to do and stayed up all night worrying. She figured Ash had already been there for hours when she found him and knew the alley was covered in cacti below.

The next day, she got to making phone calls and posting in Lubbock Facebook groups. She called LP&L but was told a crew may not make it out until Monday morning. Then to her surprise, she saw a new comment on her post.

“Somebody tagged me, Matt Rose had messaged that he saw the post and he would be sending a crew within the hour. But as I was reading the post, they were driving up,” Priscilla said.

An LP&L crew came to the rescue, shutting off power and bringing little Ash down to safety, before restoring power to the block.

“I mean, I really don’t know what to say because they didn’t have to,” Priscilla said. “It was Sunday and he’s just a cat, you know. But he’s my cat. And they rescued him. They brought him down.”

Matt Rose with LP&L, who sent the crew, is grateful Priscilla went through the proper channels to get Ash down. He says in any instance when live electrical equipment is involved, LP&L needs to be the one to respond.

“At at the end of the day, we’re just very happy that the cat’s home safe, that our crews were able to conduct this work, and that no one was hurt in this process of helping the community,” Rose said.

Since the rescue, Ash has been inside Priscilla’s home getting pampered and staying clear of doors.

“He can’t survive outside. He just doesn’t know how, obviously,” she said.

Before the rescue, Priscilla also walked to a nearby fire department to ask for help to get Ash down. Firefighters told her they wanted to help, but didn’t have the right equipment to get him down. Taren Perkins, Lubbock Fire Rescue PIO, says the fire department handles situations like this one on a case-by-case basis. She says if another City of Lubbock department has more well-suited equipment to handle the rescue, like LP&L, they will handle the case.