“For the safety of both the animal and our crews, Xcel Energy is not able to respond to remove animals from power poles or other electrical equipment. When animals are frightened, rescues can unfortunately lead to injury to the animal or to the people attempting to help. Additionally, our equipment carries a risk of electrical contact, even when it may not appear energized. Because of these safety risks, we cannot shut off power for rescue attempts,” Xcel said on social media.

Translation: “Cat might scratch our dude, or we might get sued if we accidentally hurt it during rescue. Additionally, though we 100% have to have the ability to shut down that strip for maintenance, if we totally didn’t do that and went up there anyway it would be dangerous which is why we do shut it off during maintenance. Because of the safety risks involved with literally breaking maintenance protocol which is 100% optional, we could just shut it down like we do for maintenance for ten fucking minutes and grab the cat with a cherry picker, but fuck your cat.”