Chinese woman lowers grandson from fifth floor flat by rope to rescue cat
- In viral video, onlookers shout as boy descends from block of flats in Sichuan with grandmother and uncle taking his weight
- Grandson says he was ‘not scared at all’, while grandmother admits she feared for boy after seeing video of rescue
A woman in southwestern China lowered her grandson from a fifth floor flat on a rope to rescue a kitten from the canopy of a balcony below.
On Monday, video footage of the 10-minute incident in Nanchong, a city in Sichuan province, appeared on the internet. It showed the seven-year-old with a rope around him descending to the third floor as the woman and a man took his weight.
As onlookers yelled in dismay, the boy tried to put the kitten in a bag but failed. He then took it in his arms and was hoisted back to the fifth floor. He rested briefly on the fourth floor balcony and tried to bag the cat again, but failed.
The incident earned the woman a rebuke from her neighbourhood committee, while the video caused uproar on social media.
“There are many other ways,” said one user of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service. “Why did they choose a very dangerous way to save the cat?”
“Have they ever thought of the possibility of not rescuing the cat?” wrote another Weibo user. “These elderly people must reflect on their deeds.”
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A member of staff from the neighbourhood committee told The Beijing News that the boy was the grandson of the woman and the man was his uncle. The child’s parents were away working.
“We went to her home and talked to her,” the official said. “She promised it would never happen again.”
The boy told the Red Star News website on Monday night that “he was not scared at all”. His grandmother was shown the video and said she only felt fear afterwards.
“It’s not that I don’t care about the life of my grandson,” the woman, identified by her family name Tang, was quoted as saying. “I knew what I was doing and was confident I could make it. I know I made a mistake now. I won’t do it again.”
Tang said rescuing the kitten was a trivial matter but that she did not want to trouble others, so she did not seek help from firefighters.
