When my cat was tiny, she loved to stick her arm under doors, to entice whoever was on the other side to play with her.
One time, she stuck it under the closet door, all the way up to her shoulder and got her claw stuck on the carpet. Her solution was to roll around while tugging. She didn’t call for help until she could no longer roll. We couldn’t open the door enough because her arm was only about 4" long. And our fingers weren’t long enough to reach her paw from under the door.
I was able to painfully squeeze my arm through the opening, but I couldn’t twist around enought to see her paw and I could barely touch it.
My husband was trying to hold her still and keep her calm. She was so scared that she suddenly stopped crying and started trembling. Then her eyes rolled back and she went limp.
But her claws retracted and we were able to pull her arm out. She shook herself, licked her paw and hid under the bed for 2 hours.
My fiance and I were in the South-west of Western Australia for a friend’s wedding and were staying at a place that allowed us to bring our two dogs.
In the morning on the day of the wedding we decided to take them for a walk and asked the owners of the property for their suggestions. Owing to recent rain, they suggested that the normal walking track wouldn’t be suitable and that we should take the dogs up to their top paddock where they can be let off the leash to run around. After making the short trek up to the paddock, we came in through the gate and let both dogs off the leash and as soon as I had done this, I noticed a large Kangaroo about 100m or so off into the distance. Unfortunately, so did the dogs and they promptly took off after it.
Racing off after the dogs and the poor Roo, I lost sight of them temporarily due to a pile of dead trees in the middle of the paddock and once they were back in sight I saw that they had managed to corner the Roo and were taking turns at trying to attack it (unsuccessfully). When my fiance and I finally caught up to them, it was almost impossible to get the dogs to listen to me due their excitement and every time I got close to the Kangaroo, it would turn and square up to me.
Anyway, we eventually managed to get hold of both dogs and the Roo stood and watched us as we walked away. From what I could see, there was no damage to anyone/thing involved, but I did worry about the strees the poor Kangaroo was under. I look back on it now and laugh, but at the time it was a pretty terrifying experience and putting aside the damage the dogs could have caused, there was just as much chance the Roo could have killed them (or me) with a well-timed kick.
Our family dog, a cocker spaniel absolutely loved water and we often holidayed in a caravan near a river during my childhood.
She was also prone to taking herself for extended walks so we never thought anything of it if she disappeared for an hour or so.
One afternoon my mother noted that she had been gone a while and my dad set off to find her.
He eventally came back with her lying limply in his arms. She had been swimming in the river, caught up in some river weed. So she had had to keep swimming to stay afloat.
She was exhausted.
She slept for the entire afternoon, evening and morning after. She awoke around midday the next day and was extremely stiff, but apart from that she was fine.
She also once fell in a hole when we were on a walk, once again dad doubled-back to find her. He reported she was just sitting in the hole and when he came into view she just gave one small ‘woof’ and wagged her tail (well, being a cocker, it was docked but she wagged her stubb and half her backside) and waiting for him to lift her out.
We took our Husky on a day-trip up a mountain, and when we got into trouble, she was right there with us. Except she wouldn’t scramble down the icefall like we were, and she took off. We made it down and she didn’t. We had to drive our friend back into the city around midnight, then headed back out. We slept at the bottom of the mountain until it was light out (around 5 am) and then my hubby headed back up (I was injured and couldn’t walk). He found her about two hours into the hike, tired out from chasing rabbits.
I was so relieved he found her, the bears were just coming out and were hungry. She would have tried to play with them, I’d bet.
When my Irish was a yearling, just after I got him, he lay down and fell asleep in his stall. He ended up getting three of his legs caught under the exterior sliding doors of the barn! Thoroughbred yearlings are all legs! I was very lucky - he woke up and didn’t get scared and thrash around. He could’ve broken one or more of his legs. Instead, he laid on the stall floor and waited for me to untangle him. I moved him to a stall without an exterior door, which I’d first chosen so that in case of fire he’d be easy to get out.
One day shortly after I moved out to my farm, my standard poodle Maggie didn’t come when she was called. I whistled and yelled and no Maggie. I started walking down the road looking for her, and calling. FInally I heard a whine in the woods. I went back there and found that she’d somehow gotten tangled in barbed wire and couldn’t free herself. It’s a good thing I found her, because she would’ve died trapped like that.
StG
Well, there was the hamster who got out of her cage, and almost certainly perished as a result (we never found the corpse in the house; we suspect she got outside somehow and was catfood within hours).
I had a cat who disappeared for 24+ hours back in the early 80s. Finally I went outside calling for her, and heard her mewing - she was on the roof of the apartment building behind mine. I suspect she had run up the tree very near that building, hopped onto the roof from an overhanging branch, and couldn’t get back to the tree. Fortunately the building was garden apartments, vs. townhouses, and the upper apartments had balconies; I went in and knocked on doors until someone let me in to use their balcony to coax the cat over. I grabbed her once but her leg got caught in the gutter and I had to let her go or risk breaking her leg. Then I had to coax her over AGAIN - finally got her down without further injury. It was a few days before she asked to go out again.
Our cat spent the night 40’ up a tree after being chased by a dog, until we could get the tree service out to rescue her the next day. Fortunately, the weather was moderate. My husband is so nuts about that cat, I halfway thought he was going to sleep out there with her.
The late great Tango was terrified of thunderstorms. There was a big storm one day while I was at work. I got home and stared looking around.
No dog.
Behind the couch-no dog.
In the spare room-no dog.
Where the hell is she?
Go outside and hear a little whine.
She had gotten under the porch and couldn’t get back out.
I had to dig about 6" of dirt out so she could worm her way under the joists.
She once chased a black bear over blueberry barrens for about a mile.
We were driving back from MI last Christmas with a dog we had only had for 3 months even though he was over 12 months old. He still wasn’t very good at listening and he’s very fast and will just bolt.
We had the dog in the car and the dog crate tied to the top of the van. A guy in a lane next to me motioned that the crate was flapping. We were in 5 lane across, 80 MPH traffic that was very heavy and full of trucks. I thought about getting off at the next exit but worried that if the crate was really loose it could fly off and cause an accident. I pulled over on the shoulder instead.
The whole trip, every time anyone opened the van door we would make sure that someone was holding onto Charlie. This time no. Charlie was in the very back row. My husband got out of the passenger front door and for some reason one of my sons decided to get out the passenger sliding door. When Charlie saw the door open he slipped out the sliding door. My other son, in the 3rd row, for once wasn’t asleep and said “Charlie”.
The son in the middle hadn’t even seen the dog go out the door. In the split second this happened the most likely result was playing through my head. Charlie running out onto the highway and getting hit by many vehicles while we all watched helplessly. And then the tearful drive home with the horrible scene replaying in our minds over and over forever. It’s still upsetting to think about.
Fortunately, my husband became aware that the dog was out, yelled his name in a tone that made Charlie look up. My husband just grabbed the dog by whatever he could, skin, legs, and threw him in the van.
The crate wasn’t even loose. I hope I forget about it someday. Charlie must have a good guardian angel.
I was a senior in HS and I had let the dog outside to run around and relieve himself before I left for work in the evening. I was the only one home. We had a fence and a pool. The dog, a beagle just under a year old, kept a respectful distance from the pool and didn’t really try to go swimming.
I went out to let him back in the house and found him in the pool tangled in the solar cover. He was treading water, but if he had been left too much longer, he probably would have gotten caught up and tired out and drowned. I jumped in in my work clothes and fished him out. Stupid beagle.
I’ll make a new post for the worst predicament that Charlie thinks he has ever been in.
We were at a relative’s house for Christmas. It was the night of the big dinner, everyone is around helping clean up the kitchen. Charlie is happily licking the dishes in the dishwasher when his tags get stuck on the lower dish rack.
Charlie feels this and jerks back. The rack jerks towards him, scares him, and he jerks away. The rack lunges at him again, he backs up again and the rack falls out of the dishwasher. The silverware is making a lot of noise and Charlie is terrified.
This goes on across the whole kitchen as Charlie makes his way to the basement stairs. Fortunately the rack falls off his collar before he gets there.
He is now terrified of their dishwasher and I was hoping he would feel the same towards all dishwashers but sadly, no. I might try to arrange the same incident at our house so he will stay out of it.
I had a hamster who would always manage to escape from his cage. One morning, I woke up and discovered he was not there. Oh no! I scoured the area and adjacent rooms, but nothing. Assuming the worst, I left the cage as it was, hoping he would return.
A days later, I awoke to scratching sounds. Still in a groggy state, it finally occurred to me that it could be my runaway hamster! Lo-and-behold, he appeared from under my bed. It seems that he made his way into the floorboards, but decided to pop up to say hello.
Unfortunately, while on his little adventure, he hurt himself pretty badly. In fact, half of his friggin’ face was gone! It was like some science book cross-section photo. He still appeared lively, but I took him to the vet for good measure. It was then that the vet informed me that my hamster would have to be put down 
One time my cat disappeared. This is a fulltime indoor cat that is never let out. I searched the house inside and out, no trace. At the time I had torn a filthy old acoustic ceiling out of the kitchen and it was open to the rafters. There’s a second story so there was a floor above. The cat had climbed on top of the fridge, leaped to the one place where it looked like it might have someplace to go and fell inside the wall. By the time I figured this out he had been in there for hours and never made a peep all the time I had been calling him. This is a very vocal cat that talks to himself and me all the time. I had to get a flashlight and a mirror to even see him. There was really no way to get him out except to cut a hole in the wall and that’s exactly what I did. If I hadn’t figured out what happened, the first clue might have been the smell of his decaying corpse.
Cookie Monster the cat is a sweetheart but a little short on brains. She’s also a bit tubby.
She used to get down the gap between the shed and the fence, where I couldn’t get to her, so I nailed up some latticework fencing between the two to prevent this.
One day she was pottering in the yard. I heard a distant “cruch” but thought no more of it. About an hour later I thought “where’s Cookie?” and went out to find her. Couldn’t see her anywhere, but eventually heard a plaintive, embarrassed “meeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooo?”
She had attempted to push herself through a diamond gap in the lattice fence, her stomach had got caught, and her weight had pushed it forwards and popped a nail out, causing it partially to collapse on her, trapping her further. She was just hanging there, suspended by her fat tummy, looking deeply humiliated.
It took about five minutes for me to stop laughing at her enough to resize the latticework enough for me to pull her out backwards.
- I was walking my dog in a park on top of a very steep, wooded hill that sits above a river. My dog was off leash as this park was very rarely used by others during the day. He’s off running through the trees, out of sight.
All of a sudden I hear a splash and a yelp. I ran down the wooded slope and find that my dog is indeed in the water - and there is about 3’ of undercut bank above the water level so he can’t climb out himself. I knew if I went in after him I wouldn’t be able to climb back out, either.
I looked downstream and saw a place where there was a small, flexible tree sapling near the edge of the bank and held on to it while I prayed it wouldn’t break. I called my dog and he swam over. I could reach his collar but I couldn’t quite haul him out. So I snapped the leash onto his collar and dragged him out by the leash. He was fine and I was quite shaken up.
2. Same dog, on a different, wider river. I used to go to a beach and throw sticks for him into the water. He loved to fetch. He could keep it up forever. One day I was throwing the stick for him and looking for agates while he swam out and brought it back.
This time a couple of ducks landed by him, just a little bit out of reach. I was looking for rocks so I didn’t notice right away, otherwise I would have called him back and snapped the leash back on him; I knew he liked ducks. He swam out and tried to get them. The ducks took off but landed again farther out into the river, just out of his reach. This went on for a few minutes and my dog got farther and farther away from shore. I was screaming for him by now, I took off my shoes and took my keys out of my pocket to swim, but I knew I could never swim out that far. I ran towards the boat docks to see if anyone could help me rescue him, but there was no one there that morning.
I attracted the attention of a couple who lived in the condos on the bank of the river, who called 911 because they heard a woman screaming. I had almost given up hope that he could ever make it back when I noticed he was getting closer to shore - he swam back in! The 911 call was canceled and my dog was fine.
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Years ago, we had a kitchen table with legs that were made of iron rods - welded at a point at the bottom, and then spread to about 3" at the table. We had a new kitten, and she jumped up to my lap while I was sitting at the table, and missed. Her head went through the wide part of the legs, and she slid down to the bottom and was trapped and choking. I slid her back up, and she was fine, but I always worried about that stupid table design.
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We have a very cool coffee table made from an old Mexican door. The table has a hole in it where a knot used to be. Our cat used to like to put his paw through the hole and “fish” for things. One day, I watched him do this, and he reached far into the hole, and then flopped over on his side. When he did this, he got stuck, and he started crying for help. I carefully extricated him, and he no longer does this.
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Our Lab likes to chew sticks. One day, I looked out the window, and she was pawing her mouth and whimpering. I went out to see what was wrong, and she came over, wagging her tail. Then, she would paw her mouth some more. I looked at her mouth, and couldn’t see anything wrong. Finally, I opened her mouth wide, and saw that she had wedged at piece of stick right up against the roof of her mouth. I reached in and removed it (it was wedged pretty tight).
(This one isn’t one of my pets, but I saw it and it’s pretty funny…)
I have a friend who has a pack of Italian Greyhounds. When she calls them, they all come running - like 15 or so. I was visiting one day, and she called the dogs, and they all came around the corner, including one who was wearing a spacesuit.
Huh?
I swear that one of the dogs had a space helmet on. He was wearing a glass jar on his head, and was walking around like nothing was wrong. We both busted a gut laughing. He obviously found a jar that once had something yummy in it, put his head in, and got stuck. We took it off, and he went on his way.
I was moving across town in New York City and left my cat in the old apartment with the intention of getting her last. While at my new apartment, workmen came to the old place and painted. Now, my cat was very shy and didn’t like strangers. When I went to pick her up, she was nowhere to be seen. In a state of panic I asked the workmen where she was. They didn’t know. The apartment was completely empty and I couldn’t imagine what happened to her. Until, that is, my eyes came to rest on an old-fashioned, in-wall radiator with vents and a small trap door at the bottom used to access a valve. And of course, that is where she was hiding. In the radiator. The freshly painted radiator. With the vents. She came out covered in paint and scared to death. Luckily, I got her washed up at the new place and she quickly got over it.
Sadly, I lost her recently. Here’s remembering you Sammy!
We used to have a really really dumb and overweight laborador retriever at my parents house. This dog really loved playing with tenis balls (I don’t know where she got them all, there wasn’t a tenis court around for miles). As it happened my younger brother tied a tenis ball suspended from a tree so he could hit it for batting practice. Well, it’s just high enough for the dog to jump up and grab it but then have it pulled out of her mouth before she could play with it.
Sadly, the dog never figured this out and would spend hours trying to get at that ball.
My other cat was called Pickle Boy when he was younger, because he was always getting into some kind of pickle. Nothing life threatening, just stupid stuations that required human help.
You know those lawn chairs that are wrapped in plastic tubing? We had one that had seen better days and the tubing wasn’t as tightly wound. He jumped onto it and all four feet when straight through. His solution to getting out of a pickle is, just wait quietly until a human comes by. By the time I noticed him, he was asleep whith his feet dangling above the ground.
I didn’t notice this situation, until I went to put clothes in the machine. Luckily, it was the same day. I had a hell of a time getting him out. What you can’t see is his big belly.
Basket O’Billy in your Flickr set illustrates his fluff very well. 
I had to look at more pictures because he really is one of the most gorgeous cats I’ve seen. What a face!