Cat-on-the-pole caper good crisis management

It wasn’t exactly the Exxon Valdez, the Gulf oil spill or horse meat but B.C. Hydro’s handling of the cat-on-the- pole caper was pretty good crisis management.

The problem started when Trinity the black cat climbed a B.C. Hydro power pole in Sahali and decided to stay there. Alerted by a neighbour, Trinity’s owner Clint Stooshnoff called Kamloops Fire and Rescue, and B.C. Hydro looking for help to get Trinity down.

The fire department couldn’t do it because they don’t have the expertise or authority to deal with power lines. Hydro looked over the situation and decided not to tackle it either. Cats come down from poles when they get hungry enough, they say.

As is often the case when bureaucracies can’t or won’t solve a problem, there was only one place left to go — the media. Stooshnoff went on CBC Radio Tuesday morning, and the papers started asking questions, too. By afternoon, Hydro trucks were on the scene and a crew covered off the power lines and hooked Trinity under her collar and hauled her down.

Happy ending. What happened in between, no doubt, was that Hydro’s PR department recognized a minor crisis in the making. People hate to see cats stranded without help; media love stories about stranded cats. While the initial call by field personnel not to attempt a rescue was probably correct from a technical standpoint, from a PR perspective it wasn’t.

Had Hydro continued to resist, it would have had to endure a whole lot of negative PR pain. It might have dragged on for days while Trinity languished, meowing loudly up there on the pole. If hunger and thirst had weakened her and caused her to fall, it wouldn’t be pretty.

So, Hydro quickly relented and got the job done, with lots of positive coverage from the media. Reacting quickly is the first rule of crisis management. If a company waits even a few hours to respond, the public-relations damage can become irreversible. Kudos to Hydro for understanding that.

As for the urban legend that cats will always come down from trees or poles when they get hungry enough, the wisdom is mixed on that. While pretty much all cats are good at going up, it seems some are better at coming down than others. Some, in fact, are lousy at reversing the process, and won’t come down unless they fall down — and there have been cases of that with fatal consequences.