If you have heard it before great I am so proud of you and so proud for you
, but this is for the people who have not read it, like me.
For you cat lovers. This story is a bit long but worth reading! Jacque
Claim: Woman pens hilarious account of family's efforts to rescue trapped
cat from garbage disposal.
Status: True.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002]
This is the story of the night my ten-year-old cat, Rudy, got his head
stuck in the garbage disposal.
I knew at the time that the experience would be funny if the cat survived,
so let me tell you right up front that he's fine. Getting him out wasn't
easy, though, and the process included numerous home remedies, a plumber,
two cops, an emergency overnight veterinary clinic, a case of mistaken
identity, five hours of panic, and fifteen minutes of fame.
First, some background. My husband, Rich, and I had just returned from a
five-day spring-break vacation in the Cayman Islands, where I had been
sick as a dog the whole time, trying to convince myself that if I had to feel
lousy, it was better to do it in paradise. We had arrived home at 9 p.m.,
a day and a half later than we had planned because of airline problems. I
still had illness-related vertigo and because of the flight delays had not
been able to prepare the class I was supposed to teach at 8:40 the next
morning. I sat down at my desk to think about William Carlos Williams, and
around ten o'clock I heard Rich hollering something indecipherable from
the kitchen. As I raced out to see what was wrong, I saw Rich frantically
rooting around under the kitchen sink, and Rudy -- or, rather, Rudy's
headless body --scrambling around in the sink, his claws clicking in panic
on the metal. Rich had just ground up the skin of some smoked salmon in
the garbage disposal, and when he left the room, Rudy (whom we always did
call a pinhead) had gone in after it. It is very disturbing to see the
headless body of your cat in the sink.
This is an animal that I have slept with nightly for ten years, who
burrows under the covers and purrs against my side, and who now looked like a desperate, fur-covered turkey carcass, set to defrost in the sink while
it's still alive and kicking. It was also disturbing to see Rich, Mr.
Calm-in-an-Emergency, at his wits end, trying to soothe Rudy, trying to
undo the garbage disposal, failing at both, and basically freaking out.
Adding to the chaos was Rudy's twin brother Lowell, also upset, racing
around in circles, jumping onto the kitchen counter and alternately
licking Rudy's butt for comfort and biting it out of fear. Clearly, I had to do
something. First we tried to ease Rudy out of the disposal by lubricating his head and neck. We tried Johnson's baby shampoo (kept on hand for my nieces' visits) and butter-flavored Crisco: both failed, and a now-greasy Rudy kept struggling. Rich then decided to take apart the garbage disposal, which
was a good idea, but he couldn't do it. Turns out, the thing is build like a
metal onion, you peel off one layer and another one appears, with Rudy's
head still buried deep inside, and stuck in a hard plastic collar. My job
during this process was to sit on the kitchen counter petting Rudy, trying
to calm him, with the room spinning (vertigo), Lowell howling (he's part
Siamese), and Rich clattering around with tools.
When all our efforts failed, we sought professional help. I called our
regular plumber, who actually called me back quickly, even at 11 o'clock
at night (thanks, Dave). He talked Rich through further layers of disposal
dismantling, but still we couldn't reach Rudy. I called the 1-800 number
for Incinerator (no response), a pest removal service that advertises
24-hour service (no response), an all-night emergency veterinary clinic
(who had no experience in this matter, and so, no advice), and finally, in
desperation, 911. I could see that Rudy's normally pink paw pads were
turning blue. The fire department, I figured, gets cats out of trees;
maybe they could get one out of a garbage disposal.
The dispatcher had other ideas and offered to send over two policemen.
This suggestion gave me pause. I'm from the sixties, and even if I am
currently a fine upstanding citizen, I had never considered calling the
cops and asking them to come to my house, on purpose. I resisted the
suggestion, but the dispatcher was adamant: "They'll help you out," he
said.
The cops arrived close to midnight and turned out to be quite nice. More
importantly, they were also able to think rationally, which we were not.
They were, of course, quite astonished by the situation: "I've never seen
anything like this," Officer Mike kept saying. (The unusual circumstances
helped us get quickly on a first-name basis with our cops.) Officer Tom,
who expressed immediate sympathy for our plight -- "I've had cats all my
life," he said, comfortingly â?" also had an idea. Evidently we needed a
certain tool, a tiny, circular rotating saw, that could cut through the
heavy plastic flange encircling Rudy's neck without hurting Rudy, and
Officer Tom happened to own one. "I live just five minutes from here," he
said; "I'll go get it." He soon returned, and the three of them -- Rich
and the two policemen -- got under the sink together to cut through the
garbage disposal. I sat on the counter, holding Rudy and trying not to succumb to the surreal-ness of the scene, with the weird middle-of-the-night
lighting, the room's occasional spinning, Lowell's spooky sound effects, an
apparently headless cat in my sink and six disembodied legs poking out
from under it. One good thing came of this: the guys did manage to get the
bottom off of the disposal, so we could now see Rudy's face and knew he
could breathe. But they couldn't cut the flange without risking the cat.
Stumped Officer Tom had another idea. You know," he said, "I think the reason we can't get him out is the angle of his head and body. If we could just get the sink out and lay it on its side, Ill bet we could slip him out." That
sounded like a good idea at this point. ANYTHING would have sounded like a
good idea, and as it turned out, Officer Mike runs a plumbing business on
weekends; he knew how to take out the sink!
Again they went to work, the three pairs of legs sticking out from under
the sink surrounded by an ever-increasing pile of tools and sink parts.
They cut the electrical supply, capped off the plumbing lines, unfastened
the metal clamps, unscrewed all the pipes, and about an hour later, voila!
the sink was lifted gently out of the countertop, with one guy holding the
garbage disposal (which contained Rudy's head) up close to the sink (which
contained Rudy's body). We laid the sink on its side, but even at this
more favorable removal angle, Rudy stayed stuck.
Officer Tom's radio beeped, calling him away on some kind of real police
business. As he was leaving, though, he had another good idea: "You know,"
he said, "I don't think we can get him out while he's struggling so much.
We need to get the cat sedated. If he were limp, we could slide him out."
And off he went, regretfully, a cat lover still worried about Rudy. The
remaining three of us decided that getting Rudy sedated was a good idea,
but Rich and I were new to the area. We knew that the overnight emergency
veterinary clinic was only a few minutes away, but we didn't know exactly
how to get there. "I know where it is!" declared Officer Mike. "Follow
me!"
So Mike got into his patrol car, Rich got into the driver's seat of our
car, and I got into the back, carrying the kitchen sink, what was left of
the garbage disposal, and Rudy. It was now about 2:00 a.m. We followed
Officer Mike for a few blocks when I decided to put my hand into the
garbage disposal to pet Rudy's face, hoping I could comfort him. Instead,
my sweet, gentle bedfellow chomped down on my finger hard, really hard,
and wouldn't let go. My scream reflex kicked into gear, and I couldn't stop
the noise. Rich slammed on the brakes, hollering "What? What happened? Should I stop?", checking us out in the rearview mirror. "No," I managed to get out between screams, "just keep driving. Rudy's biting me, but we've got to get to the vet. Just go!"
Rich turned his attention back to the road, where Officer Mike took a turn
we hadn't expected, and we followed. After a few minutes Rudy let go, and
as I stopped screaming, I looked up to discover that we were wandering
aimlessly through an industrial park, in and out of empty parking lots,
past little streets that didn't look at all familiar. "Where's he taking us?" I asked. "We should have been there ten minutes ago!" Rich was as
mystified as I was, but all we knew to do was follow the police car until,
finally, he pulled into a church parking lot and we pulled up next to him.
As Rich rolled down the window to ask, "Mike, where are we going? The cop,
who was not Mike, rolled down his window and asked, "Why are you following
me?" Once Rich and I recovered from our shock at having tailed the wrong
cop car and the policeman from his pique at being stalked, he led us
quickly to the emergency vet, where Mike greeted us by holding open the
door, exclaiming "Where were you guys???"
It was lucky that Mike got to the vet's ahead of us, because we hadn't
thought to call and warn them about what was coming. (Clearly, by this
time we weren't really thinking at all.) We brought in the kitchen sink
containing Rudy and the garbage disposal containing his head, and the
clinic staff was ready.