COCO THE CAT GROUNDED AFTER LEAP OF FAITH FROM UTILITY POLE

Coco is not an outdoor cat — and after his latest escapade drew the attention of the neighbourhood, the electrical company and thousands of internet strangers, he’s lucky to be getting off with a slight punishment.

Coco, a three-year-old tabby cat, has had his garden time severely limited this week after he climbed up a hydro pole, purred for two hours, waited until he was just about rescued, then took a leap of faith towards the ground below.

“He’s crying to get outdoors and I’m trying to keep him in,” says Alice Reid, Coco’s owner. “He’s going to have to get used to being in the house more.”

“I’m not going to let him out, if I can do it.”

Reid captured Coco’s adventure near her home in Dildo, N.L., in a video she posted on Facebook on Monday.

She said she initially made the post to thank the utility worker who climbed up the pole to try to rescue Coco. But without expecting it, the video has been shared hundreds of times — and has received almost 200,000 views.

“I never, in a million years, thought that he was going to jump on his own,” Reid said.

She said she was initially more concerned for the utility worker and feared that Coco was going to scratch him during the rescue mission.

“When he hit the ground, I seen him take off running,” she said, “but I figured for sure he was hurt.”

Coco has never run up an electrical pole before. Reid figures a dog in the neighbourhood scared him up there.

Some neighbours gathered around to try to rescue Coco with ladders before they called Newfoundland Power for help.

“Coco tried to get down himself a couple of times, but he was afraid,” Reid said. “He was shaking and cold.”

Reid said she got a good fright when Coco finally jumped.

“Me and the neighbours, everyone here was just squealing,” she said.

The cat, however, appears unbothered.

“He came up the step and went on in,” she said. “Then he lied down on the floor and started washing himself like, you know, nothing ever happened.”