Kulongoski to the rescue.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The neighborhood drama played out slowly: Blackie the cat was far out on the limb of a fir tree, maybe 50 feet up. She'd been there for several days, enduring harassment by crows and her sharpening hunger and thirst. The fire department wouldn't come - doing so might delay a response to an emergency call.

Besides, the dispatcher said, the cat will come down on her own eventually. The retired firefighter who lives across the street concurred: "I've never found a cat skeleton in a tree."

Turns out Blackie's distraught owners and wisecracking neighbors called the wrong agency. Next time, they should go to the top, and get Gov. Ted Kulongoski on the job.

Kulongoski was putting in a shift at the Oregon Food Bank in Portland a few weeks ago when he saw people maneuvering a 20-foot extension ladder under a tree. A cat named Quimby had been chased up the tree by a dog, and preparations were under way to climb after him. "I'll do it," the governor said. While his state police detail stood nervously by, Kulongoski climbed the ladder, grabbed Quimby and carried him safely to the ground.

A photographer for the food bank happened to be on hand, and a picture of Kulongoski's rescue appeared on the front page of the May 20 (Portland) Oregonian. If there's any political benefit to Kulongoski, it comes as fair compensation for the cat scratches on his arm.

Ron Saxton, Kulongoski's Republican opponent, is undoubtedly rolling his eyes. How is he supposed to top that? Should he go to the coast and try to rescue a beached whale?

Too bad Saxton didn't know about Blackie, who was still high in the tree while the gubernatorial rescue was taking place. An extension ladder wouldn't have helped - for this job, Saxton would have needed a strap and some climbing spikes. Even then, getting Blackie would have required both climbing skills and cat-calling talent that would have made Kulongoski's saving of Quimby look easy.

But now it's too late. Blackie came down on her own, just as the fire department dispatcher said she would.

Saxton's frustrations notwithstanding, Oregonians can feel good about living in a state where the governor will risk his neck to pluck a cat from a tree. The police responsible for Kulongoski's security have surely answered many treed cat calls in their careers and know that there are no cat skeletons to be found among the branches, but they let the governor go up the ladder anyway. This was an ordinary matter of one person helping another, and in Oregon that can still happen - even if one of them happens to be the governor. May it ever be so.