Text 4518, 245 rader
Skriven 2006-06-25 02:50:20 av PATRICK LONG (1:275/311)
Ärende: 'Adventure Cat'
=======================
'Adventure Cat'

by Patti Schroeder

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 
undecipherable 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 wit’s 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 constructed like a 
metal onion: you peel off one layer and another one appears, with Rudy's 
head still buried deep inside, 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 Insinkerator (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 expressed immediate sympathy for our plight. "I have 
had cats all my life," he said, comfortingly.  Also he 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 rooms 
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 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, I'll 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 drivers 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 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 breaks, hollering "What? What happened? Should I stop?" 
checking us out in the rear view 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, 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. 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," 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 never seen 
anything like this," he said again. At about 3 a.m., the vet came in to 
tell us that 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 that 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...
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