WYOMING, Pa. — Rio, short for Oreo, a 6-month-old kitten that likes to spend her time napping on paperwork and watching television. But her life wasn't always so easy. Up until last Wednesday, she was a stray and found herself in a dangerous situation.
"The other day, we were on our way to lunch, and my dad got a call from our next-door neighbor that there was a cat stuck on the roof," said Victoria Stack, who lives a few houses down from where Rio was found.
Stack says 16 Rio was on this roof for two days. They believe she walked up some stairs and scaled up some ice but then couldn't climb back down.
"We ended up calling the Wyoming borough street department, and they came over, took us three and a half hours to get her down," Stack continued.
In a video from the 45-foot-high rescue, John Scholz, the man in the bucket truck, spent hours clearing roads in the borough before he brought Rio to safety.
"We got a bucket truck, we borrowed it from Kingston, and we ended up getting a bucket truck. Saving her, we went around the house three different times because she was running back and forth," explained Stack. "Well, we were freezing standing there. It was 28 degrees, and we were only out there for three hours, and we're a lot larger than her, so we were just saying we're not going to leave her alone until she's down because there's no way that if we couldn't do this, you couldn't do this."
Rio was taken to the vet and was adopted by Stack and her family, who live a few houses down. She's grateful the crews from the road department stepped in to lend a helping hand.
"Thank you so much, they, they were really great. We wouldn't have been able to do without her, and they all stood out there and 30-degree or 28-degree weather for three hours, so they were awesome."
Now Rio will be spending her time in a much warmer, cozier atmosphere.