Loryn

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.

__________________

~ loryn@loryntaylor . com ~

Loryn

They took his temperature (which was down 10
degrees) and his oxygen level (which was half of normal), and the vet
declared: "This cat is in serious shock. We've got to sedate him and get
him out of there immediately." When I asked if it was OK to sedate a cat
in shock, the vet said grimly, "We don't have a choice." With that, he
injected the cat; Rudy went limp; and the vet squeezed about half a tube
of K-Y jelly onto the cat's neck and pulled him free.
Then the whole team jumped into "code blue" mode. (I know this from watching a lot of ER.)
They laid Rudy on a cart, where one person hooked up IV fluids, another put
little socks on his paws ("You'd be amazed how much heat they lose through
their pads,â?� she said), one covered him with hot water bottles and a
blanket, and another took a blow-dryer to warm up Rudy's now very gunky
head. The fur on his head dried in stiff little spikes, making him look
rather pathetically punk as he lay there, limp and motionless.
At this point they sent Rich, Mike, and me to sit in the waiting room. While they tried to bring Rudy back to life I told Mike he didn't have to stay,
but he just stood there, shaking his head. "I've ever seen anything like
this," he said again. At about 3 am, the vet came in to tell us the
prognosis was good for a full recovery. They needed to keep Rudy overnight
to re-hydrate him and give him something for the brain swelling they
assumed he had, but if all went well, we could take him home the following
night. Just in time to hear the good news, Officer Tom rushed in, finished
with his real police work and concerned about Rudy. I figured that once
this ordeal was over and Rudy was home safely, I would have to re-think my
position on the police.
Rich and I got back home about 3:30. We hadn't unpacked from our trip, I
was still intermittently dizzy, and I still hadn't prepared my 8:40 class.
"I need a vacation," I said, and while I called the office to leave a
message canceling my class, Rich made us a pitcher of martinis.
I slept late the next day and then badgered the vet about Rudy's condition
until he said that Rudy could come home later that day. I was working on
the suitcases when the phone rang. "Hi, this is Steve Huskey from the
Norristown Times-Herald," a voice told me. "Listen, I was just going
through the police blotter from last night. Mostly it's the usual stuff
breaking and entering, petty theft but there's this one item. Um, do you
have a cat?" So I told Steve the whole story, which interested him. A
couple hours later he called back to say that his editor was interested,
too; did I have a picture of Rudy? The next day Rudy was front-page news,
under the ridiculous headline "Catch of the Day Lands Cat in Hot Water."
There were some noteworthy repercussions to the newspaper article. Mr.
Huskey had somehow inferred that I called 911 because I thought Rich, my
husband, was going into shock, although how he concluded this from my
comment that "his pads were turning blue," I don't quite understand. So
the first thing I had to do was call Rich at work, Rich, who had worked
tirelessly to free Rudy -- and swear that I had been misquoted. When I
arrived at work myself, I was famous; people had been calling my secretary
all morning to inquire about Rudy's health. When I called our regular vet
(whom I had met only once) to make a follow-up appointment for Rudy, the
receptionist asked, "Is this the famous Rudy's mother?" When I brought my
car in for routine maintenance a few days later, Dave, my mechanic, said,
"We read about your cat. Is he OK?" When I called a tree surgeon about my
dying red oak, he asked if I knew the person on that street whose cat had
been in the garbage disposal. And when I went to get my hair cut, the
shampoo person told me the funny story her grandma had read in the paper,
about a cat who got stuck in the garbage disposal. Even today, over a year
later, people ask about Rudy, whom a 9-year-old neighbor had always called
"the Adventure Cat" because he used to climb on the roof of her house and
peer in the second-story window at her.
I don't know what the moral of this story is, but I do know that this
adventure" cost me $1100 in emergency vet bills, follow-up vet care,
new sink, new plumbing, new electrical wiring, and new garbage disposal, one
with a cover. The vet can no longer say he's seen everything but the
kitchen sink. I wanted to thank Officers Tom and Mike by giving them gift
certificates to the local hardware store, but was told that they couldn't
accept gifts, that I would put them in a bad position if I tried. So I
wrote a letter to the Police Chief praising their good deeds and sent
individual thank-you notes to Tom and Mike, complete with pictures of
Rudy, so they could see what he looks like with his head on. And Rudy, whom we originally got for free (or so we thought), still sleeps with me under the
covers on cold nights and unaccountably, he still sometimes prowls the
sink, hoping for fish.

Origins: This isn't exactly what we had in mind when we created a "Dubious
Disposals" section, but it seemed the obvious location for this
side-splitting tale of the hapless cat who catches his head in a garbage
disposal, and the ensuing comedy of errors as his family attempts to free
him.
A report of these events did indeed appear in the Norristown Times-Herald,
and it is indeed a true story. The article reproduced above is an account
prepared for friends by Rudy's owner, Patti Schroeder, a professor in the
English department at Ursinus College in Collegeville.

I laughed so hard while reading this! OMG I could just image her screaming in the back of the car while the cat with the kitchen sink around his neck is biting her and causing him to lose the cop they were following and being asking by the cop, "Why are you following me"? I had tears coming down my face that is so funny!

I am glad the kitty is alive and well!

__________________

~ loryn@loryntaylor . com ~

baddog

OT: A girl was over today, and she assured me Fred was a bird bird, as in a female.

I guess that explains the attitude.

Loryn

No way! Fred is a boy! Females don't look like that! I will have to look into that one!

__________________

~ loryn@loryntaylor . com ~

chupachups

I need a screen reading soft

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Deputy Chief Command

like anyone is actually going to read all that

__________________

Donny

I did. And it was very entertaining.

baddog

someone that likes cats might

Sly

Reading that was pretty funny. I can only imagine how hilarious it would be with a good joke teller.

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bangman

Norristown, huh?
That's where I live.

__________________
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ICQ: 312744199

sniperwolf

hey .. i can't believe I just read that.. lol

__________________
~Accepting design works~

Loryn

Thank you Donny! It is very entertaining. I think the fact that the woman who this happen to had someone who was a professor in the
English department at Ursinus College in Collegeville write it. But it is funny. I first thought too, oh gosh this is too long, but it is so funny to imagine going through all of that and just sitting there like I never in my life thought I would be in that back seat of a car following a cop car with my kitchen sink in my lap and my cat stuck in it. It's just so funny!

I didn't catch the part of the kitty, who got his little head stuck, had his twin brother, another kitty, licking his butt trying to calm him down, cause cats do that. I read over it so fast I thought the husbands twin brother was rubbing the cats ass to calm the cat down and I thought I guess that is a way to calm a cat down. I laughed so hard at myself for not catching that.

__________________

~ loryn@loryntaylor . com ~

Loryn

I know I would think I was on an acid trip or something during that whole thing. It's just so like WOAH how does this happen to someone.

__________________

~ loryn@loryntaylor . com ~

Donny

The other cat licking it and occassionally biting its ass... yeah, that was hilarious.

viki

That was hilarious.

And as a sidenote...
I'm in Levittown. Seems like I find more local people every day.

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viki [at] realsexcash [dot] com
228 263 454

PimpDaddyPants

I agree with Deputy