I am of the "really can't get into the writing or art zone if child around" breed. Alas.
I got Mal out of the banister by brute force. I basically held his whole body up with one arm, to get his head to the widest space with no pointy parts, and then kind of squeezed his face to squeeze his jaw corners in, and shoved. I have to admit to briefly considering WD-40.
(Random Raq story): This one time, in Yemen...it had just rained, turning the dust into mud but also making puddles here and there. One of the newborn embassy kittens, just all over mud, found that there was a clean puddle under the external unit of the air conditioner. So she stuck her head in through the struts to drink. And, because heads are designed to push into openings but not back out of openings, she got stuck. There was yowling.
The mother cat and the rest of the litter gathered around, and added to the yelling. One of my friends and I took it upon ourselves to get her out, but by the time we could get our hands in, all the mud had dried on her fur. So her head was about twice its normal size.
My friend spent 3 hours laying on the ground with his arm stuck under the a/c, massaging water into her fur to get the mud out.
After that we were able to turn her head and get her out, but man, THREE HOURS.