This has got to be the worst of several predicaments my pets have been in:
Like Hi, Neighbor! a pet of mine got into trouble with floorboards. When I was a junior in high school, my parents decided to redo the attic for my room, and give my old room (directly below) to Vynce. There was a crack between two attic floorboards, but I put my dresser over it, and never gave it another thought.
At least not until the following year.
For Christmas senior year I got a ferret, Bandit. As all ferrets are, she was very very very curious. And to top it off, she ocassionally managed to pop the closure of her cage and get lose. One day she did this, and apparently discovered that long-forgotten crack in the floorboards. I didn’t realize this at first, and looked all over when I discovered that her cage was empty.
Then Vynce informs me that he “hears something funny” and we discovered that she’d gotten herself in between my floor and his ceiling. We couldn’t reach her, of course, and soon began to worry that she’d end up dying stuck in there, since she didn’t seem to be able to get out on her own, either.
In the end, we probably not very wisely decided to remove his light fixture (it had a box set into the ceiling, unlike any other light I’ve ever seen) and it’s box, and see if we could coax her out. Fortunately, we managed to do so. Only later did it occur to us that maybe removing the box that held all that wiring shouldn’t have been done with the power still on.
Anyway, Bandit seemed very glad to be rescued after spending more than half an hour trapped. I got a new cage with a more secure latch immediately.
We always figured his looks is compensation for not much going on upstairs. 
My sheltie locked herself in the laundry room.
Somehow, she managed to knock over the ironing board in just such a way that it was wedged with one end against the door and the other against the wall (I have a long, narrow laundry room).
There was no way into that room. I peered through the outside window to see what the problem was, but the window was bolted. The door opened inwards, so I couldn’t take it off the hinges. It’s a long story, but I had to have some neighbors help me actually remove the window so I could climb in. This window is under my patio, so we had to do the entire thing while on our knees in the grossness. Then I had to fix the blasted window. While the damned dog barked the entire time.
Then there was the time my little, always-indoor cat got out. I saw her on the outside looking in at me through that same laundry room window. I went outside to get her, but could not catch her. Not unusual for indoor cats who tend to get scared of everything when they get outside for the first time.
I chased her under the patio, through the neighborhood, got her out from under my neighbor’s cars. It took forever and we went everywhere, but I finally got her. When I grabbed her, she was incredibly squirmy. So I held her with a tight grip, and then… I felt something that shouldn’t be there.
I looked down–HOLY CRAP–I was holding an unneutered tom! I had the wrong blasted cat. A cat that looked just like my little girl except for, well, some dangly bits.
I put him down and went inside to see my own cat sitting there looking at me with a look of disdain on her face. She turned around and sauntered off. I’m sure she was thinking “you are too stupid to be my slave.”
That’s hilarious! It reminds me of the time my neighbors were setting up for a big 4th of July cookout, in their side yard. We saw Billy Bob (who rarely leaves our porch), jump onto their picnic table and made off with a hot dog. My husband went running over there, yelling for him to get home. There were some little kids playing in the yard and they scattered as he aproached. He got halfway across the yard, turned around and came back with his face red. It wasn’t Billy Bob.
So I had this cat named Vicious. We got him from my in laws when he was a tiny kitten–their cat had had kittens, and they’d just tossed them all outside. Well they came home one day to find that all the kittens and the mother cat had been attacked, killed and partially eaten by some unknown thingy. This one last kitten turned up later that night, the sole survivor. So I took it, because they don’t deserve to have any kittens anyway.
So, it’s Christmas Eve and I’m in the shower, husband is at work. I get out of the shower, put on my robe and tie my hair up in a towel, and as I’m doing so I hear something banging around in the kitchen. Knowing it’s just me and the dog and the cat and the bunnies, I’m a little alarmed. Surely, if someone had broken into the house they’d have come in through the front, right? So I grab the nearest stick-like object (the plunger) and head out. I sneak into the kitchen, and I witness the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen: a flying cat. No kidding, he was bouncing all over the room, flying across the counters and hitting the walls and the stove. FLYING CAT. And why was he flying? Well… I’d gotten them all some canned food for Christmas dinner and apparently the cat had gotten into the garbage because he had an IAMS dog food can stuck on his head. Running, flying madly around the kitchen, with this green can stuck on his head. I nearly wet myself with laughter, but right at that moment, he collapsed and lay still. The can was wedged on there so tightly he couldn’t breathe! CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP. If you can imagine, I’m sitting there in the kitchen floor soaking wet in nothing but my robe and a towel, trying to pry the can off this cat’s head. No luck, it wouldn’t come off and I was afraid that if I pulled too hard I’d rip his ears or pop his eyes out of his skull or something. Time for some quick thinking man… um… ummm. ummmm… THE CAN OPENER! I leapt to the silverware drawer, whipped out my trusty can opener and opened the other end of the can. Immediately the cat sucked in a long breath and I was able to pop the can off his face. He wobbled around for a minute, licked his face and wandered away, leaving me still soaking wet sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, somewhat shell-shocked.
Unfortunately my husband insisted on letting him be an inside-outside cat and one day he let him out and Vicious never came back. I miss him a lot, but I’ve still got that can opener to remember him by.
Okay. When we first got Random, he had been left to die in the stairwell of a friend’s apartment building, so he was pretty distrustful of humans. We got him used to our house one room at a time, so he started out in the spare bedroom. He loved to play with the heat register on the floor, and we’d come home a couple of times to find it pulled out altogether. After a week or two of this, I came home to hear a pathetic little kitty ‘Mew’ that was muffled and barely audible. I went up to his room, only to find that the heat register was out, and he had stepped on the duct work which had given way. He had gone through the original ceiling below and was now stuck between the false ceiling and the old kitchen ceiling.
So I got on the kitchen table, pushed one of the acoustic tiles out of the way and started coaxing him toward the opening. All was well until he realized that there was nothing beneath him but a six foot drop to the table top. He tried to back away, but I grabbed his shoulders and started to pull him toward me. Even though he’s digging in, I didn’t let go and pulled him out, at which point his back legs swing forward and dig into my nose. I start to fall backwards, the table tips and we all fall down, at which point he scurries up the stairs. I jumped up and bolted up the stairs, closing the door to the spare bedroom before he’s got a chance to repeat the whole cycle.
He’d got a claw up my nose, so I’m bleeding profusely out the septum and all I can think is ‘He uses those claws in the litter box; how am I supposed to disinfect this?’ That’s when I fill a teacup with rubbing alcohol and put my nose in it. YYYYYYOWWWW! As I watch my nose shrink from rutabaga size to beet size, I now remember - I have a fencing mask in my gym bag; why in Hell didn’t I think of that before I started this lark?
This one’s not mine, but my friend D., while stage managing a production of Cats, had an upstairs neighbour in one of those ugly, modern 30 storey apartment buildings. Diane was on the 23rd, and the person one up from her used to leave her cat in a harness, on a leash, on the balcony when she went to work for the day. One day, D. wakes up to the sound of a terrified cat in distress - this cat has somehow jumped over the balcony railing and is dangling in mid-air, 23 floors up and held only by the harness and leash. The cat is freaking out and lashing out at D. as she tries to help. Maintenance is called, and finally a two person team holds a large board under the cat while someone who has got into the neighbour’s apartment pulls up on the leash.
The neighbour got yelled at by the maintenance crew and by D., but I’m sorry to say that it happened every couple of months or so, that the cat would be dangling there when D. got home or woke up. Same scenario. Stupid cat, but even stupider owner. Makes me think it’s not just the pets that need to be neutered.
This is ancient history, but my dog, in an effort to attack the neighbor’s dog, bit the neighbor’s arm/stump. “Oops, sorry” doesn’t begin to cover it.
When I was much younger, my family had a lovely border collie called Sula. She was a wonderful dog, and not prone to doing anything stupid or dangerous. In fact, being a border collie, she was generally smarter than us.
That being said, even the most intelligent amongst us slip up occasionally. The first time she did something daft, it was partly our fault, and as such, we paid a higher price than she did. She used to sleep in the kitchen at night, and one night my mother had accidentally left a full dish of butter on the kitchen counter. And she had also left a chair in the room next to the counter. Next morning, having almost completed the school run, that mistake was regurgitate all over my mum and her car (luckily I escaped). The car was never the same after the rancid regurgitated butter incident.
A more alarming slip up came a few years later. We were quite happy leaving Sula at home when we went out. She would sleep when we weren’t there, and never got into any trouble. That is, until this one and only time. I don’t know what was going through her head that day, and looking back it seems almost surreal.
We lived in a big, old turn of the century stone built house. It had big sash windows, and fairly deep windowsills, both inside and out. My mother liked airing out the house, and often kept her (upstairs) bedroom window open about 6 inches. We came home on that particular day to find Sula standing on the windowsill, on the outside of the house, quite calmly looking down at us from about 20 feet up.
We of course, automatically called out her name, and then realising our mistake, started yelling at her to stay for all we were worth. One of us raced inside, and got to the window in time to open it more fully and get her back in. She appeared no worse for wear.
To this day, we have no idea how she managed to squirm out through a 6 inch gap without falling off the ledge on the other side, how long she was there for before we got home, or what the hell made her do something so strange.
God, I really miss that dog!
When a friend’s dog died around Thanksgiving, she gave us a bag of toys that they’d been saving for Christmas. None of us noticed that there was also a bottle of arthritis meds in it, until the bag fell off the shelf while we were at work and the Penny-dog chewed it open. She spent the night at the emergency vet, and I got new gray hair!
I can’t think of anything Binkley’s done that scared us that much.
This wasn’t too bad, but it was incredibly FUNNY. When my cat was a kitten and still learning how to properly use her claws, somehow she managed to stick her right front paw over her head (so that the right front paw crossed the back of her neck and over her left ear) and she caught her claw on the carpet.
Thus her head was stuck under her right front leg or paw or whatever you call it
Then she couldn’t figure out how to retract the claw and she started meowing 'cause she was stuck. You had to be there but trust me it was funny
So if the neighbor hadn’t put the cat on a harness, would it just have managed to hurl itself off a balcony?
One day my big fat cat got his claw stuck in his mouth. I’m sitting at the computer, doing whatever when I hear the WTF? meow. I turn my head and he’s trying to pull his paw out with all he’s got and the same time snapping his head from side to side and making horrible noises. I get down on the floor and grab him, and he’s hissing and slashing at me and generally making an ass of himself. I finally grab his paw and manage to back his claw out of his cheek. He hisses at me one more time, surely to remind me that this was all my fault, shows me his butthole, and walks away. I trimmed the little prick’s claws when the GF got home that night.
Well, it’s hard to say - probably.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a great idea to leave a cat on a balcony 24 floors up without some sort of supervision. After it jumped and slipped once, I’d be keeping it indoors. After twice, I really think the owner is not being responsible.
I used to date a guy whose mom had several Pomeranians. These indoor foo-foo dogs, were kept outside in a pen! But the pen was just made of wire fencing about 3’ high. They were constantly escaping and running amok, and the neighbors were complaining. So she tethered them to the inside of the pen, towards the bottom of the fence, giving them enough rope to wander around the pen. But not enough so that if they jumped out they would land on the ground.
The next day, three were hanging outside the pen, strangled to death.
My older dog (80 lbs.) eating toothpicks which came out of a ham which held down pineapples; that trip to the Vet cost $150.00. No damage.
After a baked chicken disappeared from the kitchen (bones and all) via older dog, I resolved to put the dog to sleep if it got sick. Never did. Still alive today. Still eating chicken bones in the garbage when someone forgets to lock up the garbage when we leave. Stupid dog. Stupider owners.
The younger dog ran off with the older one during evening bathroom break. My wife spent till four in the morning trying to call them, driving around, etc (I work out of state). Next morning, we get a call from the local hair salon that our younger dog had been hit by a car a couple of blocks away and that they were holding both of them. Got knocked out and the head was covered with cuts, but after they healed no scarring was evident. Stupid dogs. Relieved owners.
My old dog, Mikey, nearly blind, and very old, dug out of the yard, and went exploring. Idiot neighbor had left her pool gate open, and Mikey wandered into the pool. Couldn’t figure out how to get out, and she was morbidly obese and couldn’t get him out herself, so rather than asking another neighbor for help…she called animal control, who ticketed me for having a dog at large. :smack:
Molly, the cat, was playing in the living room as a kitten, and managed to get a fishing lure stuck in her chest like a brooch (husband’s fault the lure was within kitty reach.) Vet bill for that one. :smack:
Why is it when my animals get in deep crap, I’m the one that pays? Hmmmmm?
My old dog went out in the yard at about 3 am. Then I heard some horrible painful yowling. I ran outside and found he had his toenail caught in the fence coils. I had to pick him up and feed his nail slowly out the opening. He was about 70 lbs ,it was dark and he was fighting hard to get away. Stupid dog.
God… so many.
I guess the funniest was my old Gordon Boy Corey. He was about 6 or 7 months old at the time. I was working in the yard and looked up to find him having some sort of siezure…or so I thought. He was standing, front legs splayed, head hanging low, mouth open, saliva pouring from his mouth as he shook his head. I went to him and tried to comfort him. And then he pawed at his mouth.
I reached in to find a June bug clinging to the roof of his mouth. I flicked it out on the ground… he had bitten it once, it was alive but could not fly. The bug began limping away, and Corey… sweet, gentle Corey… got the ANGRIEST look on his face and went after it, and began STOMPING it with his feet until it was dead. I laughed and laughed and laughed.
Another one:
Many years ago, I had a guinea pig named Perky. I came home one evening to Perkey wheek-wheek wheeking in a panicy tone. I went to see what was wrong, and when I touched his cage-his metal cage- to open it, I got a helluvan electrical shock. He had nibbled into a lamp cord that was too near the cage and the entire cage was electrified.
And another:
I was out riding my horse Star alone one fall afternoon, and we went down by a lake, on what I thought was juat mud. Wrong. It was something like quicksand, and Star just… dropped out from under me, his entire ass sinking in the muck up to the back of the saddle. His front legs were straight out in front of him like a laying dog. Somehow I kept my cool and got off-I only sunk to my knees-and was able to gather brush and limbs and get it under him until he could get a purchase and get out.
The most frightening thing about that was how much he trusted me-he COMPLETELY stopped struggling as soon as he saw me and laid his head against me, just so SURE I would save him. I had no idea at the time if I would be able to or not. Thirty years later it still tears me up. I do not deserve that sort of love, devotion and trust from my animals, and yet they give it without question, over and over and over again.
All these trash-eating stories reminded me of another story:
One day I came home to find my dog wearing a muzzle! I live alone, so I had no idea how that could happen. Who would break into my house to muzzle the dog? Nothing was disturbed (except for the dog, who wasn’t too happy about the situation). It was a very odd muzzle too: it was rubber and had these triangle-shaped things pointing towards her mouth.
I removed the thing and grabbed the phone near the sink to call the police and report the strangest home invasion ever. At that moment, I glanced at my sink… and saw there was nothing in the drain.
The “muzzle”? It was the ring from the gargabe disposal. :smack: Somehow the dog got up on the counter, and I imagine the disposal smelled like something yummy was down there.
Good thing I hadn’t actually dialed the phone yet. The police department would probably still be laughing at me!