A few days ago the unthinkable happened.

Mikey, a tabby from California, escaped from his human’s living room and got himself stuck in a 90-foot palm tree on Sept. 25. We don’t care what kind of plump, juicy bird he was chasing, 90 feet ain’t no joke.

His dutiful human servant, Christine Lopez, tried everything she could to get the little dude to come down. She cracked open cans of the kitty crack. She waved tuna. She spoke soft words to reassure him.

She even called the local fire department, which tried to help but didn’t have a ladder long enough to get to Mikey.

Running out of options, Christine called animal control, and they suggested the ultimate weapon: KFC.

Now I don’t know about you, but Buddy would find his way down from a skyscraper to get his paws on that crispy fried goodness. It is, after all, finger lickin’ good.

Here’s where the story gets weird: Mikey didn’t go for it. He wouldn’t come down, not even for KFC! What kind of cat turns down KFC?

By that point Mikey had been in the tree for a week, and he’d attracted an audience according to the Whittier Daily News:

The neighbors’ dogs would sit in the yard, looking concerned; the neighborhood cats would sit at the base of the tree, staring and caterwauling, with Mikey responding with meows, she said.

Yep. They were probably telling Mikey they were gonna eat his tuna and his KFC if he didn’t get his butt down from the tree.

By Monday morning Mikey was still up there. Drone footage confirmed the terrified tabby was still huddled amid the fronds. Almost two weeks had passed. Mikey was meowing for help and Christine was getting desperate.

She called PETA for assistance and the group found a heroic, cat-loving order of chivalric knights who call themselves The Crane Guys of La Mirada led by Sir Miles of Burkhart.

Sir Miles reached the top of the palm and began negotiations with the terrified Mikey.

Just when it seemed this ghastly ordeal would be over, Mikey jumped, activating Kitty Flight Mode, and upon landing immediately dashed under a neighbor’s porch, probably because of all the human, canine and feline onlookers milling around. Poor Mikey was embarrassed.

Thankfully, the story has a happy ending: Christine was finally able to reach Mikey when he chose a new hiding spot underneath a car. A relieved and famished Mikey tucked into a can of the good stuff and lapped up a whole bowl of water.

The little criminal has now lost his freedom.

“He’s doing life inside the house now,” Lopez told the paper. “After he decides to get paroled, he might walk on a leash.”