On Wednesday, a suspected car thief in San Francisco climbed onto a third-story window ledge and threatened to jump. Police negotiated with the suicidal man for three hours, but were having little luck talking him down. During the course of the negotiation, however, members of man's family arrived on the scene, and officers discovered that they had brought the man's orange-and-white cat with them.
Officers took the cat up to the negotiators, who were talking to the man from a fire escape near the window. According to SF Gate, "Using his pet, hostage negotiators were able to persuade him to go back inside the building, come down the stairs and surrender without incident."
They also let the man see his cat before being taken to jail:
If somebody isn't already working on a script about a cat hostage negotiator, Hollywood is broken. I'd do it, but I'm too busy pretending I'm not crying in the office after reading this story.
