Community Corner

Stoughton's D'Arpino Helps to Rescue Local Cat

The South Shore Disaster Animal Rescue Team (SSDART) helped to rescue a cat stuck in tree this past week in Halifax, MA. Stoughton's Christopher L. D'Arpino is the SSDART team leader.

The Following is a release from the South Shore Disaster Animal Rescue Team:

The South Shore Disaster Animal Rescue Team (SSDART), led by Stoughton resident , helped to rescue a cat stuck in tree this past week in Halifax, MA.  

At 11:30 a.m. on Monday the cat’s owner contacted D’Arpino, the SSDART team leader, reporting that his cat had been in a tree for approximately twenty hours.  

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The one-year-old cat was fifty to sixty feet up and on a very weak branch. The wind conditions, though light, were causing the tree and branch to sway, and therefore making it an unsafe scenario for the cat.  

The dispatched Jonathan Cuneo, an EMT, and D’Arpino and Bridget Hatch, both Veterinary technicians trained in rope and high angle rescue.  

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Once on scene, a mechanical life was used to get the rescuers in the vicinity of the cat. The rescuers then had to traverse the tree another ten feet to reach the cat.  The cat was rescued safely, was medically triaged on scene and transported to a local veterinary hospital as a precaution.

“The real difficulty was the condition of the tree; we didn’t have a branch or limb we felt we could safely rope to,” D’Arpino said. “The training and ability to improvise comes in handy in situations like this.”

“Our vet techs triaged the cat for any injuries and did have the cat transported to a local hospital as a precaution. The owners, as you can imagine, were greatly relieved to have their cat on the ground,” Cuneo said.

The South Shore Disaster Animal Rescue Team is an all-volunteer, highly trained animal rescue team based in Stoughton.  

Christopher D’Arpino of Stoughton, Jonathan Cuneo of Mansfield, and Bridget Hatch of Halifax all were glad to have a positive outcome for the owners and the cat.


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