The story of Boozou’s amazing rescue

Guest post by Armughan -E-Muhammad.

I had bought a pet Semi Persian kitten (Male) for my wife as a birthday present on 10th Feb 2012. We named the cat Boozou Bumpets. Boozou is a very shy cat and gets scared very easily. It took us a whole month to get him to recognize and associate with us. We used to live in a house in  Gulshan e Iqbal Block 13-d/1 and Boozou spent his days inside the house roaming around but inside. He has never ventured outside and has grown considerably.

Recently we shifted to another house in Gulshan, Karachi. The biggest stress factor for us was how Boozou, who has now become part of the family, will cope with the house movement. Anyway we shifted a week back and kept Boozou inside a large room on the roof. He was allowed to venture anywhere he wants and slowly he started venturing outside the room and outside the new house. Although being Shy he was usually close by and returned to us when we called or searched for him. 

Day before yesterday when I returned from office my wife told me that Boozou has been missing for a couple of hours and has not returned even when called. I told her to take it easy as he might have ventured far and will return. My assumption was wrong. Two more hours went by without a trace of Boozou and my wife was frantic. So along with my in-laws we started a search but after an hour of searching we did not find any trace of him. Eventually we went to the roof and called out his name. The very sharp ears of my Mother in Law heard a very soft meowing sound coming from somewhere. We looked around and eventually found him in one of the most improbable places.

The new house is built such that the roof of the neighbouring house touches our roof wall. Infact, if combined both houses have one single roof with just a wall demarcating the boundary. Right next to this wall on the neighbour’s side is a duct which is around 10 feet in length but just 1.5 (one and a half) feet wide. The duct goes all the way to the ground from the roof. This distance is around 18 feet (Two stories). Somehow Boozou utilizing his newly acquired curiosity skills had gone down this duct. (It is still a mystery how he ended up there). Now having concrete walls all around there was noway for him to climb out of there. 

We discovered him crouched inside the duct around 11 at night. Utilizing our local resources. me and my in-laws tried every which way to get him to come out but he was scared and did not move at all. Infact, there was a small crevice at the bottom of  the duct where he tucked his head. We inserted a long poles inside the duct wrapped with gauze wire so that he might climb out but to no avail. We gave up for the night and left him in Peace in there. Dropped some food inside the duct and let him be.

The second day I called up every available emergency service out there (Edhi, Chippa, Rescue 1122 (Punjab). Did not call Police for obvious reasons 🙂 ). The only one to respond was PAWS. I called up Dr. Ayaz and explained him the situation. He told me that he was not available but he would arrange for a volunteer from PAWS to come  over and help out.  The entire day we on our own tried to get Boozou out but without any success. He was scared and had quit moving. Also he had eaten nothing. We thought he had fainted or something. 

At 1800 hrs in the evening help from PAWS arrived in the form of one Mr. Hassan a local volunteer for PAWS. He took a rope and did a slipknot thing with it. Kept trying to slip the rope over Boozou’s head but to to no avail. Only once he succeeded but when he started pulling Boozou out he fell from halfway up. I came back from office and joined efforts with Mr. Hassan. After some thoughts we took two ten feet poles and joined there ends together using nails and rope to make one 20 feet long pole. To one end of it Mr. Hassan nailed the slip knot rope keeping the other end of the rope in his hand. In this was we made a make shift dog pull device. Along with this we made a make shift sling from a bed sheet and tied four ropes to each corner of the sheet..

After some effort with the make shift Dog pull Mr. Hassan was able to put the slip knot loop around Boozous head. Do note that he was operating from 20 feet above while Boozou was on the ground. It was quite a herculean effort from the representative of PAWS due to limited space of operation from height. Once the rope was securely around Boozou’s neck we lowered the make shift sling inside the duct using the ropes and placed it on the ground of the duct. Mr. Hassan then pulled Boozou on to the sling and very quickly we all pulled the sling up.

As soon as Boozou was out he panicked and tried to run but Mr. Hassan kept strong hold on him and wrapped him up in the bed sheet and handed our Boozou to us. We salute you Mr. Hassan and PAWS for this effort and rescuing Boozou from an impossible to reach position. 

Boozou was taken inside the room and given food and hydration. Afterwards he was bathed and cleaned and left in the room. Within an hour he was back to this normal Shy self and purring like crazy as if thanking PAWS for a job well done.

I would like to commend PAWS and specially Mr. Hassan and Dr. Ayaz for this effort and ask the concerned authorities to launch an animal rescue service in Karachi. We have Rescue 1122 operating in Punjab which helps animals as well so why not in Karachi.