A Fire & Rescue NSW team fished out the four-week-old female and took her to the pound.

Station officer Shane Austin said he hoped she’d be adopted, and suggested she be named after some notorious female criminal.

He said the rescue on Wednesday had been a good chance for the Carthage Street station firies to drill.

“Because it was in the longyard, which is where the inmates exercise, we had to lock everyone down.

“We do have pretty strict procedures on any incident we have in the jail and we generally only get to rehearse or practise them once a year … what we can and can’t take in with us, and so on.”

Station officer Austin said the firies hosed in a bit of water to see where it flowed, “then upped the water ante a little bit”.

“We gave the poor little creature a bit of waterslide ride out of there,” he said.

“It was over and done with pretty quickly, but she came out looking a bit worse for wear – you know what cat’s look like when they're wet.”

He said it was “the classic firefighter case of rescuing a kitten in distress”, and that saving domestic animals was “all part of our obligations” as a rescue organisation.

“We offer them the same rescue services as people,” he said.