IT'S never a dull day on the job for our NSW State Emergency Service (SES) Port Macquarie unit.
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It's a classic rescue story involving three cute kittens and a perplexed mum who was probably wondering what all the fuss was about.
Volunteers successfully retrieved the brood from inside the ceiling of Port Macquarie Orthodontics.
Unit commander Michael Ward said the business owner and his staff had called a vet, who asked for his team's help to get the kittens down from a suspended ceiling.
"We sent a crew out yesterday (May 26) at about lunchtime. We found both the kittens and their mum, but she didn't want to come down," Mr Ward said.
"Since you can't get a cat down from a suspended ceiling without breaking it, the vet set up a trap next to the kittens and organised to come back the next morning."
Mr Ward said the vet tempted mother moggy with some tuna.
"At about 3:30pm that afternoon, the owner heard meowing in one of the walls. We went back at 5pm after their customers had left. One of the kittens was stuck in the wall."
Using a bit of SES ingenuity, Mr Ward placed his arm through a hole in the wall and dangled a Chux wipe in front of the kitten's nose.
"The kitten wasn't too far down the wall, about a metre down. When it started to play with the Chux wipe and got its claws stuck, we gently lifted it up and out to the doting staff."
Mr Ward and his team returned this morning to find that mum had walked into the trap overnight.
"The vet was able to take both the cat and her kittens away. If they have owners, they will find them but if they're strays, the good news is that there is a long list of staff at the business who are willing to adopt them.
"The staff were stoked that we could get the kittens out and the boss was stoked that we could get them out without cutting his wall."
Mr Ward praised the efforts of crew members involved who put their animal rescue skills to the test.
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