Dramatic cat rescue from dam. Cat slides down 100 foot spillway

Huntington County Sheriff’s Department’s Facebook page tells the story of this dramatic cat rescue from a dam. Sheriff Newton of the Huntington County Sheriff’s Department received a phone call from a person who was fishing off State Road 5. The individual said that there was a cat stranded on the spillway structure of a dam.

A cat had become stuck in an inaccessible area of the dam. They didn’t know how the cat had become trapped in that position. It is speculated that he may fallen off the road or been thrown off it.

The police decided that the cat was in distress where he or she was lodged in the metal structure. There was no way for a person to get to the cat. It was decided that the only way to rescue the cat was for him to slide down the slipway and for the rescuers to be at the bottom of it in a boat. You can see this happening in the video.

The Army Corps of Engineers got a boat and permission to shut down the water in order to rescue the cat.

After an hour they were able to shut down the water and launch the boat. When they reached the base of the concrete spillway the cat came out of that part of the dam’s structure and slid, as you can see, down the entirety of the slipway into the water. At the precise moment the cat hits the water the person nearest the slipway grabs him and places him into the boat. We are not told why the cat launched himself from the structure onto the spillway.

I have judged the spillway to be at least a hundred feet in length. The cat is hard to see because relative to the size of the dam he is very small. You might want to play the video more than once.

The two guys that you see in the photograph below are from the Army Corps of Engineers and they are Ryan Martin and Jared Perrot. These are the guys in the boat. This was a team effort between the police and the Army Corps of Engineers. Great work.

Link to the Facebook page.