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12/30/08
In Phoenix, a cat owner named Michael is frustrated in not being able to get assistance in rescuing his cat Brutis, who’s been stuck in a neighbor’s tree for 8 days.
Brutis escaped from Michael a week ago last Sunday. He’s a strictly indoor cat. When Michael finally located Brutis, the cat was stuck in the branches of the tree, two stories from the ground. Michael’s been working non-stop since then to extricate Brutis. So far, he’s tried hosing the cat out with water (not recommended, btw) and tempting him with food. (Mike, Jeter Harris recommends Bumble Bee Solid White Albacore Tuna in water as the most effective cat bait.) He cannot leave food at the base of the tree, however, because it’s on the neighbor’s property.
The neighbor — a police officer — is refusing access to his property, and consequently, no one can get up the tree to help the cat down. Mike contacted Animal Control, but they said they don’t handle cats due to limited resources. The Humane Society attempted a rescue, but their ladders were too short.
You can click here to watch the video news story.
Citizens for North Phoenix Strays attempted a rescue on Monday, and were nearly shot off the property. ABC15 reported:
On Monday, Toni Smith and Terry Toman of the Citizens for North Phoenix Strays made another attempt to get Brutis out of the tree.
“There’s some friction here between these neighbors and I said I could care less about the people I just want to go up and get the cat,” said Smith.
Smith and Toman said they chose to go behind the home on a public sidewalk and lean a 25-foot ladder against his back wall.
In this way they figured they were not on his property.
Just as they were about to get the cat, Smith said, “This guy comes barreling out of his house, flashed his gun and his badge, and started screaming and freaking out.”
Toman added, “It’s a little overkill”.
We tried to speak with the officer to get his side of the story on what happened Monday afternoon and he asked us to call Police.
The Phoenix Police Department said their officer has a right to defend his property.
Michael’s afraid that as Brutis weakens, he may eventually fall out and hurt himself.
This story was reported by ABC15.com, in Phoenix, and I read the comments on the story, a couple of which made my blood run cold:
JAHOOH
“just shoot the darn thing… there are millions running the street and in the human society… no loss right?”
charliedog1
2 Votes
“that is why there are rifles. . . it is a freaking cat, get a life, or get a dog. . .”
Silverlegacyga
1 Vote
“its a cat who cares its eating birds in the tree it will come down when it wants… there are billions of cats missing homes go get a new one.”
What a brutal bunch of cretins!
Be safe, Brutis! We hope we’ll be able to report a happy ending to this story!
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UPDATE! And here we have our happy ending! Brutis was rescued this morning by a group of police officers. Here’s the update from ABC15.com:
Late Tuesday morning, Michael said six police officers arrived at the home and rescued the cat using a ladder.
Michael said Brutis is a bit tired, scared and skinnier, but by all accounts appears okay.
Sgt. Thompson said Phoenix Police don’t normally rescue cats from trees, but said calls to the Police Chief’s office prompted the move to get the cat down from the tree.
Michael said he has no hard feelings for the people who own the tree the cat was stuck in, he’s just glad to have Brutis safely home.
(Thanks, Lucy, for the update!)
[PHOTO SOURCE: abc15.com]
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12/29/08
 Fui and Suey commented on a recent post that the lady whose cat (Voodoo, pictured above) fell 34-stories from a highrise in Australia didn’t even go to check on her cat until the next morning. So I did some digging and found more on this story … which leads me to believe that this woman needs to join Kim Murphy in the “No cats ever again cuz you’re too dimwitted to care for them properly” Club.
Here’s the deal: Voodoo’s owner, Sheree Washington, freely admitted that she frequently watched “in horror” as Voodoo balanced precariously on the railing. She said it made her nervous.
We have three 2nd-floor balconies. Although our cats would not likely suffer any problems jumping the 12 or so feet to the ground, we take no chances. We’ve affixed netting that encloses the railings so that the cats can enjoy sitting in the sun on the balcony floor, but can’t jump up to access the wide (and relatively safe) railing. I cannot fathom living in a high rise with a cat and not blocking every available access to a window or balcony that could lead to accidental falls. Even if your cat has good balance, no cat ever has purrfect balance 100% of the time, and the diversion of a bird or insect flitting across the field of view could result in a lunge from safety.
I was aghast to read that the Washingtons have not only often witnessed Voodoo on the brink of falling, but that they suspected he’d gone over the night he fell but didn’t actually care enough to go downstairs and see if he was on the ground alive but suffering from injuries. They went down the next morning looking for the body.
Here’s the complete story from Goldcoast.com.au:
This cat fell 34 floors from a Runaway Bay penthouse and survived to see out the rest of his eight lives.
Voodoo the seven-year-old manx has always had an affinity for heights and enjoys living life on the edge.
His owner Sheree Washington said he often teetered on the edge of the balcony, much to her horror.
She and her husband Wayne first noticed Voodoo was missing about 9pm on Monday, after the couple had finished dinner.
“We searched high and low several times and he was nowhere to be found,” said Mr Washington.
“At 1am, we went to bed.”
Mrs Washington said: “It was a very daunting night and I figured if I found him, he wouldn’t be alive.”
Yesterday morning, she made the journey downstairs, expecting to find her beloved cat’s body at the base of the high rise.
Instead, she found Voodoo with nothing more than a few scratches.
“I just saw him lying under the bushes,” she said.
“He was just crouched back in the corner.”
Voodoo had fallen 34 floors and landed on a bush.
Mrs Washington said there was no doubt in her mind the bush had saved his life.
Several branches were snapped, clearly indicating where Voodoo had landed.
“I grabbed the cat box, put him in it and drove him to the vet,” she said.
“Normally, if he sees the cat box he hides because he knows we’re taking him somewhere, but he just jumped straight in.”
Miraculously, Voodoo walked away from the incident with a bloodshot eye, a scratched ear, a cut mouth and a damaged paw.
Mrs Washington said the vet told her the record for an animal surviving a fall was a cat in New York which fell 64 storeys.
The vet told her on lower floors cats tended to injure themselves but by falling from further up, they had time to right themselves and land on their feet.
The vet gave Voodoo an antibiotic injection and told Mrs Washington to observe him overnight.
“The temperature, the heartbeat, everything else was fine and she poked and prodded and couldn’t see any signs of damage,” she said.
“Apparently his colour was good, which meant he didn’t have any internal bleeding.”
Mr Washington said the incident was ‘unbelievable’.
“I was convinced he was dead and was coming home for a burial instead of a celebration,” he said.
“He’s a very lucky cat.”
Voodoo was born at a property at Allora near Warwick. The Washingtons fell in love with him and his brother Rocket and brought them to the Gold Coast.
Rocket died four years ago after eating a toad fish near their waterfront house in Paradise Waters.
A year later, the couple moved to the penthouse of the Broadwater Tower with Voodoo in tow.
“He’s quite happy here,” said Mrs Washington.
“I’d feel terrible when he’d walk along the edge — it just makes your palms sweat.
“I used to joke that if you ever found the cat downstairs, post him under the door because there was no way he’d survive.”
This is not the first time Voodoo’s love of heights has ended in trouble.
“Where we used to live, we had a big norfolk pine and he managed to climb nearly to the top of that when he was only a kitten,” she said.
“My daughter climbed the tree with a backpack on because the crows were swooping the tree and brought him down.”
Mrs Washington said Voodoo had been very quiet since the fall and did not eat or drink yesterday, but the prognosis seemed good.
With any luck, Voodoo would be back to normal and eating his Christmas prawns.
Voodoo’s going need some serious white magic to survive life with the Washington family.
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12/27/08
In Column One in the L.A. Times, Kim Murphy wrote about recently finding her nearly-dead cat hidden in a window seat nine weeks after going missing. Mostly a happy ending, although the cat may be left with long-term neurological damage.
Kim prefaces Bess’ story with a telling of the unfortunate ends her other cats have met: TWO cats at different times fell to their deaths from balconies. One was hit by a bus. Another survived being run through the dryer. At one point, the Animal Welfare Society in London would not approve her application to adopt a cat, ostensibly because she lived on a bus route. ( Read the Column for the context.)
Which brings us to Bess:
Bess disappeared Sept. 28.
We were having a barbecue that night, with lots of loud music and friends and kids and a rambunctious dog. The next morning, when no one could find Bess, we feared the worst.
…We printed up posters and tacked them around the neighborhood. We knocked on doors, walked up and down streets calling her name, placed her toys and my daughter’s nightgown in the yard to entice her with familiar smells.
Eventually, even the children admitted she wasn’t coming home.
On Nov. 30 … we had another blowout party. I made chicken tacos, my neighbor’s boyfriend made pitchers of margaritas; we built a fire on the deck and smoked cigars under the stars. Afterward, I stood in the kitchen doing dishes while my friend Kris and her daughter, Sophie, talked in the living room.
There was something in Kris’ voice when she called my name that felt like walking into a freezer. “What?” I asked.
“Kim,” she said again. “Come here.”
I walked slowly into the living room. Then I heard it: a low, weak, persistent “meow” coming from inside the window seat, a bench with a hinged door, that Kris and Sophie had opened up.
A small part of me celebrated before I even got across the room. The rest of me melted in horror. It had been nearly nine weeks since Bess disappeared, probably sneaking into the open window seat when no one was watching. Nine weeks locked in a box, without food and water, or even much air. What was left? What was meowing?
As a war correspondent, I have been trained to put my emotions aside in times of danger, assess the situation and act quickly. This I tried to do. I scooped up the tiny bundle of ragtag fur that was Bess — leaking a clear, viscous fluid — and carried her to the kitchen. I grabbed the turkey baster, filled it with water and tried to inject it into her mouth, which was gaping and unresponsive except for the weak howl that came out every few seconds.
I grabbed the phone and called my brother, who is a veterinarian in Bremerton, about half an hour away. He gave me directions to the nearest emergency clinic. Wrapping Bess in a large towel, I climbed into Kris’ car and we sped off.
I spent all that night at Bess’ side as the doctor and technicians pumped an IV sugar solution into her veins and offered her a small plate of food. Like a mad creature, Bess lunged and bit everything in sight, including my finger, and nearly broke her teeth on the spoon as I helped push the food toward her mouth.
She weighed just 4.7 pounds. Her blood was heavy with salt. As morning dawned, she began having seizures — a signal of possible brain damage from the dehydration or a phenomenon known as “refeeding syndrome,” a potentially fatal metabolic crisis seen in the survivors of World War II concentration camps that can occur when victims of starvation are fed too quickly.
For the next few days, we visited Bess every evening. She was blind. She could barely raise her head, which was oddly bowed toward the ground in a classic sign of thiamine and potassium deficiency. She continued to have what the doctors chillingly described as “neurological events.”
Slowly, however, she got better. After four days, when the vet bills were approaching $3,000, we brought her home. [Read the whole column here.]
So, I finished reading this, was feeling all warm and fuzzy and happy that Bess was okay, and then I started thinking that the Animal Welfare Society in London might have been wise not to allow Kim to adopt a cat. Just like humans who love kids but have no parental skills, Kim may be a cat lover, but it sounds like she comes up a little short in the caregiving department when it comes to cats. (Not one, but TWO of her cats fell to their deaths from balconies?)
Let’s see… loud party with a rambunctious dog. How about checking all the hidey places in the house where a terrified cat might go for refuge, including (am I the only one who thinks this is a no-brainer?) — the window seat.
What do you think? A series of unfortunate events for a jinxed cat lover, or someone who seriously needs to learn how to properly care for and protect her feline charges?
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12/26/08
 A cat from down under, appropriately named Voodoo, conjured up some good mojo and white magic in surviving a fall from his 34-story high apartment.
Here’s the story from AFP:
SYDNEY (AFP) — A lucky Australian cat used up one of its lives when it survived a 34-storey plunge from an apartment building window, a report said Wednesday.
The seven-year-old moggy Voodoo vanished from a high-rise flat on the Gold Coast of eastern Queensland state on Monday and reappeared on the ground where his fall was apparently broken by some well-placed bushes.
The cat’s owner, Sheree Washington, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Voodoo was fond of standing on a small ledge outside the 34th-floor flat and looking down on the world.
“Obviously he was looking over too far and went. So he fell 34 floors and was lucky enough to land in some bushes which I think have saved him,” she said.
“We’ve had a look at where he landed and one of the branches that was broken has got cat hair on it and it’s about an inch (2.54 centimeters) in diameter. So he was a very lucky pussy cat,” Washington said.
The fortunate feline got away with only minor injuries, including scratches and a damaged paw.
Reminder: Although it’s possible for cats to survive falls from great heights, many do not. Other’s who do survive suffer significant trauma, including broken bones, broken teeth, and internal bleeding and injuries. If you live in a high-rise, please don’t put your cat in jeopardy.
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12/09/08
 Last week, we reported on the story of a black kitten stuck in a wall near Petsmart in San Luis Obispo. The tiny kitten is recuperating, and doing about as well as can be expected, given her ordeal. She’s undergone a couple of name changes (Lucky, Jingle Bells and Berlin [as in “tearing down the wall”), and it looks like Berlin might stick. Craig, at the Central Coast Pet Emergency Clinic, left a comment to let us know that you can track Lucky/Berlin’s progress on the Central Coast Pet ER’s blog. You can even send an email, to wish her a speedy recovery! Thanks, Craig and the staff at the Central Coast Pet Emergency Clinic!
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12/05/08
After pitifully meowing for help for several days, a 5-lb, five-month-old kitten stuck within a wall near Petsmart in San Luis Obispo was rescued earlier this week. Paul Williams, Petsmart employee extraordinaire, extricated the lucky black cat after three hours of “intense demolition” with a jackhammer removed sufficient concrete from the wall to free her.
Lucky suffered scratches to her face and legs, was treated for dehydration, and will likely suffer from jackhammerphobia for the rest of her life, but she was otherwise in fairly good shape, given her ordeal. Here’s the story:
Paul Williams, manager of PetSmart in the Irish Hills Shopping Center, said customers were coming into his store late last week and telling him they could hear a cat crying from somewhere inside a planter next to his building.
A county Animal Services officer came Sunday with an infrared scope borrowed from the San Luis Obispo Fire Department.
“It couldn’t look through dirt and concrete,” said Eric Anderson, Animal Services manager, so rescue efforts were put off until the following day. Meanwhile, Lucky cried on.
Officers were back on the scene Monday morning with a fiber-optic scope they’d borrowed from the county Bomb Task Force.
But despite Lucky’s cries, they couldn’t locate her. By now, crowds were beginning to swell around the planter. But as night fell, rescue attempts were again called off. Lucky’s heartbreaking litany continued.
Tuesday morning, Lucky was spotted with the fiber optics. She had apparently wedged herself into a two-inch-wide drainage canal.
Wanting as much to show support as to get a hot dog at Costco, Sheriff’s Department spokesman Rob Bryn said, Sheriff Pat Hedges and Undersheriff Steve Bolts were on the scene Tuesday morning.
Hedges called Clint Pearce, president of Madonna Enterprises, and asked if a hole could be punched into the wall. Pearce didn’t hesitate and called in a crew with jackhammers, portable saws and sledgehammers. Hedges added a five-man crew of inmates to help. Lucky cried on.
After drilling into the wall, it became apparent that J.W. Design, builders of the center, had spared no expense when it came to constructing the wall; it was heavy-duty concrete liberally laced with steel rebar.
“We had a choice,” Pearce said. “We could let it die or break down the planter wall and create space to get it out.
“We had to be really careful. We didn’t want the cure to kill the cat,” he added. “So we’d jackhammer a bit, then stop, then take a hand chisel and hammer to widen the hole.”
Demolition continued until dark, and although Lucky had moved farther back into the wall, she still sounded strong. “I can’t believe the crazy dedication of those workers,” said PetSmart’s Williams. “They got through this wall and no cat.”
Later, while closing up the store, Williams, a self-described animal activist, took some water and kibble out and dropped it into the hole. “I saw a paw swipe at the kibble,” he said.
He lay down in the planter box and peered into the hole with the help of a flashlight, and there was Lucky. But it didn’t look good.
“Its eyes were closed and its tongue was hanging out,” Williams said. “It looked like it had given up, and that really hit home.
“I really started pounding and finally could touch her but she didn’t respond,” he said. “So we got a turkey baster and squirted her with water and she started lapping it up.
“I got hold of her front paws. I’m a pretty small guy with skinny arms, but I was still concerned about getting my arms stuck, which would have been a whole other story.
“Although my arms were bleeding, we got her out on simple adrenaline,” Williams said.
By 9:30 p.m., Lucky was on her way to Central Coast Pet Emergency in Arroyo Grande, where she’s being treated — free of charge — for severe dehydration and some nasty abrasions on her face, rear and paws, said Courtney Jackson, practice manager.
As it turns out, Lucky is a totally black 5-month-old that weighs around five pounds. After Pet Emergency fixes her up over the next few days, Lucky will go to Animal Services.
“For legal purposes,” Anderson said, “we have to treat her like a stray and put her up for adoption. We’ll get her altered and vaccinations, and we’ll look very carefully at getting her a good home.”
He may have to look no further than Pearce, who said she could join his other barn cats and live the life of Riley, dining on mice. Lucky kitty.
For information on how to adopt this or other shelter cats, call the San Luis Obispo County Animal Services shelter at 805-781-4400. No word on whether you get a discount on the adoption fee for Lucky since she only has eight of her nine lives remaining.
A big thanks to our great friend Bogdan (left) for tipping us off to this heartwarming animal-rescue story from his neck of the woods in Central California.
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