Firefighters in New York City received an usual request: Rescue a cop stuck in a tree who'd been trying to rescue a cat.

According to a hilarious account in the New York Post, New York’s finest spent about 30 minutes to right a rescue gone embarrassingly wrong.

First, the New York Police Department responded to 911 phone calls from local residents in Queens who noticed a feline high up in a tree across from Public School 213, which was letting out.

Veteran Police Officer Dane Natto and his partner arrived on the scene, and Natto tackled the tree, climbing up to get the cat. But the cat saw the cop coming and climbed higher, as did Natto. Finally, the officer admitted defeat. He then realized that he, too, was stuck in the tree—some 30 feet off the ground.

A growing audience, including elementary schoolkids from PS 213, watched the fiasco unfold.

“We looked out the window, and we saw the cop inside the tree—sitting,” Luna Giuong told the Post. “[His] partner was laughing at him."

He stopped laughing long enough to call the New York Fire Department, which, writes the Post, “couldn’t believe what they were hearing.”

When the NYFD arrived, “they didn’t go straight to helping him,” Giuong recalled. “They all gathered around and laughed at him. They took their time."

Finally, using a ladder to climb the tree (the right way to rescue a cat, by the way), firefighters got the feline. Then Natto used the ladder to climb down. His descent was greeted with applause from the crowd.

The rescue took about 30 minutes, but, unfortunately for Natto, that cat tale will probably last a lifetime.