In my other role here at the newspaper as a general assignment reporter, I've written a few stories over the years that were of interest to me but not so much to our readers.
Some of them involved a dozen or more interviews, many hours of research, and a few days to put into words, all to produce absolutely no feedback from the public - assuming they scanned the piece at all.
I understand the phenomenon. I have read many stories that I found to be informative and well-crafted, yet elicited only a mild, mental "how about that?" before I converted the sections of newspaper from which they appeared into strips of absorbent material and placed them at the base of our dogs' emergency/foul weather comfort station in the Steelhammer Compound basement.
I've learned that if you really want to get readers involved in a story, the story needs to involve domestic animals - especially cats or dogs involved in remarkable feats of loyalty, bravery or endurance. The love of cats and dogs and the role their companionship plays in our lives seems to transcend all political, social, ethnic, economic, age and gender barriers.
I had the good fortune to be an available warm body near our newsroom's city desk one day last week when the call came in that a cat was stranded 50 feet up a tree in the Loudendale area, in a location the local fire department was apparently unable to reach. Well, okay, I didn't feel all that fortunate at first. Lots of cats get stuck in trees, after all, and most of them make it down safely without having to burn more than one or two of their nine lives. At some point, hunger, thirst or loneliness trumps fear of heights.
But then I found out that the cat in question, Sylvester, had been stuck up a tree for 12 days. The longest surviving tree-bound cat I came across during a hasty Google search had been marooned for 10 days.
Suffering succotash!
Sylvester was beginning to sound like a true survivor.
At that point, after receiving no callbacks from animal control officers, I overcame inertia and with photographer Sam Owens, made the trip to Sylvester's place, where John and Kay Cooper, the parents of the cat's owner, long-haul trucker Michael Cooper, were doing their best to try to coax Sylvester down from the decayed birch limb he was clinging to 50 feet above Davis Creek.
After getting the basics of the situation from the Coopers and their across-the-creek neighbor, Glen Cecil, I watched Sylvester and listened to his calls of distress, which were being answered by the Coopers' other cat, Olivia, from inside their house, and from the Coopers and Cecil on the outside.
You didn't need a translator to know the cats and their people missed each other and were concerned about Sylvester's future, even though, I learned, he had survived a similar 9-day ordeal a couple of years earlier.
Soon, I found myself joining in the chorus of humans trying to approximate feline meowing, though I doubted he could understand my attempt at communicating "turn around and climb down the tree feet-first, head-last, hotshot!"
I spent much of the following day taking calls from scores of pet lovers from across the state and country offering rescue suggestions to pass along and asking for updates on Sylvester's health and safety. Later that evening, I was relieved to learn that Sylvester was safe and out of the tree by the end of Day 12, thanks to the efforts of tree service owner Clifton Moss of Sissonville, who had been contacted by a neighbor who read of Sylvester's plight in the newspaper.
Sylvester's story turned out to be a welcome change from the usual news diet of presidential debate spin, murders and meth arrests.
But the eight-year-old feline with black body fur and a white chest patch set the news coverage bar pretty high.
Your cat may have to remain treebound for a full 14 days to expect equal coverage.