Denne historie er dramatisk og meget morsom - fordi den endte godt. Det
kunne ligeså godt være gået ganske galt.
Jeg ved intet om hvem der har skrevet den elelr hvilken kat det egt
drejer sig om.
Måske skal en "garbage disposal" forklares - det er en elektrisk
affaldskværn man har monteret i køkkenvasken.
mvh Camilla
This is very long, but since it brought me to tears with laughter, I
had to share. Even if you don't like cats, you will enjoy this one.
_________________________________________________________________________
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 the cat is 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.
My husband Rich and I had just returned from a 5 day vacation in the
Cayman Islands--where I had been sick as a dog the whole time. We
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 for 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 from the kitchen. I raced over to see what was wrong and
spied 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 and his head stuck in the
garbage disposal. Rich had just ground up the skin of some smoked salmon
in the disposal, and when he left the room, Rudy (who always was 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 fur-covered turkey carcass, defrosting in the sink while it's
still alive and kicking. It was also disturbing to see Rich, Mr.
Calm-in-any-Emergency, at his wit's end, trying to simultaneously soothe
Rudy and undo the garbage disposal, and 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 with 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 under the sink
with his 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
finally, in desperation, 9-1-1. 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.
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, 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), 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. 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 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. (you can see
where this is going, can't you?) "If we could just get the sink out," he
continued, "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, viola! 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 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 really
hard and wouldn't let go. My scream reflex kicked into gear. Rich
slammed on the brakes, hollering "What? What happened? Should I stop?"
"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 Officer
Mike, where are were 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. 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 footpads," 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
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 and 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.
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 for 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 said. "Listen, I was just
going through the police blotter from last night. Um, do you have a
cat?"
So I told Steve the whole story, which interested him immensely. 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 9-1-1 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 took 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, which 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 $1,100 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,
still sometimes prowls the sink, hoping for fish.
--
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