Cat Tale

I forwarded this to a number of people yesterday but most didn't get it, so
I'm sending again. It's long so you may want to print out and read later.
Love,
S.
A Cat's Tale...

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, Bill, 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 PM, 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 Bill hollering
something undecipherable from the kitchen.

As I raced out to see what was wrong, I saw Bill 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.

Bill 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 Bill, Mr. Calm-in-any-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.

Bill 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
Bill 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 Bill 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, Bill 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 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, 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 Bill 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, Bill 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 2:00 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. Bill 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!"

Bill 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!"

Bill 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 Bill 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 Bill 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 vets 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 Bill, 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 AM, 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.

Bill 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, Bill

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 Bill, 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 Bill at work. Bill, 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, a new
sink, new plumbing, new electrical wiring, and a 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...