A cat that was stuck on the 17th floor ledge of a tower in a New Town housing complex for nearly 24 hours was rescued by a part-time mountaineer using a harness and ropes to scale down to its level.

The cat was stuck on the ledge of a bathroom window of a 17th floor apartment of the Bengal Shelter Akankha Housing Complex.

A group of residents spotted it on Friday evening after being alerted by the animal’s cries. However, they did not raise an alarm because they thought that the cat would be able to come down by itself.

On Saturday evening, when the residents noticed that it was still there, they alerted a local NGO as well as the fire department.

Samaresh Das, the secretary of the New Town Forum and News, got in touch with mountaineers Assem Mondal and Krishnendu Bikash Parial, who reached the Bengal Shelter Akankha Housing Complex along with a team of four others. They came armed with climbing ropes, harnesses, carabiners and descenders among others.

The team soon realised that they would have to use ropes to fix up a line from the 18th floor to get to the ledge because the consecutive flats nearest to the ledge on the 16th and 17th floors were locked as the owners live outside the city.

Mondal said he then fixed up a rope from the 18th floor balcony and climbed onto the 17th floor ledge and placed a wooden plank to the fire exit balcony on the same floor.

“The cat was terrified and I realised that it was thirsty and dehydrated. I then went up and got a bowl of water and placed a few fishes on the plank,” said Mondal.

The other members of the team then got hold of a swimming pool net and Mondal again climbed on the ledge.

“While I chided the cat to move along the plank the other members used the swimming pool net to prevent it from getting too close to the edge of the plank. We were relieved when it finally got onto the balcony of the fire exit,” said Mondal.

Parial, an income tax officer who runs Lifeguards that organises mountaineering expeditions and adventure camps, said the rescue was “tricky” as there was a three-foot gap between the ledge and the balcony. “To add to our worries the cat was terrified and all of us heaved a sigh of relief as it crossed the plank without falling down,” he said.

The residents had also alerted the fire department but they said they could do little as the noise from operating a sky lift could scare the cat further and it might have jumped.