Our cat chewed through the plastic cover of our window AC unit, and fell four stories. At first I was convinced he was dead, and then when meowed faintly, I had a fear that he had really injured himself, like broken his back, and then what would we have to do, you know?
The worst part is that we had been at the beach earlier that day, and Mr. Del had gotten a terrible sunburn, the lobster red kind that was too unbearable to even put a shirt on because the fabric touching the skin hurt too much. He climbed down our fire escape to rescue the cat. Fortunately, the cat was fine, just scared. He was so glad to see Mr. Del that the cat wrapped himself around Mr. Del’s neck and sunk all four paws deep into his sunburnt shoulders. Mr. Del then had to climb back up with a panicked cat clinging to him. I am really not sure who was the most traumatized by the whole episode.
Max the Bad Bulgarian Cat used to get up to all kinds of bad stuff when he was a tiny guy.
He was a street cat until I spotted him on the corner of Akatzia and Osvobozhdenie, opposite my house, and he looked at me all miserable and I was like, “OKAY, TINY KITTY, YOU WIN.” So Max came to live with me. He adored me at first because he was all starving and I gave him food, so he would follow me around like a…puppy. I would walk around the village with him at my heels, it was hilarious.
Anyway, one time, I went to the market with tiny bad kitty Max following me, and all of a sudden I heard a yowl. I spun to find a big dog clenching my little guy in his mouth, shaking him like crazy. Naturally, I freaked out completely and starting shrieking at the dog, who dropped Max and ran off.
Poor guy was absolutely traumatized.
He was an indoor-outdoor kitty for awhile and for awhile he would regularly climb the grape arbor in the front yard of the house across the street from me. A couple of times, I ended up in their yard in my pajamas, urging him to climb down while he yowled in terror. (Did this stop him from doing it the next time, though? No.) Once, the man of the house eventually got out a ladder and climbed up to pick Max off his arbor. All while his daughter - who was one of my students, of course - looked on, amused. I felt so dignified.
And then there’s the time he got stuck in the fridge. That was hilarious.
I used to bring Rocky (may the lord rest his wee soul) the wee mongrel collie/spaniel etc. creature for a walk around my town, including up to my shop. We also used to let him out in the morning to have a look around. One morning he didn’t turn up back at home. Much distraughtness etc. Eventually we got a call from a girl in shop near our own. It turned out that our wee Rocky had got in behind our shop and got stuck where said girl found him in a semi-catatonic state (no pun intended).
One time I came home to find one of the greyhounds, Apollo, missing. I could not for the life of me figure out where he was. The doors and windows were all locked and closed. The doors to the upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms were shut. I checked all the closets. How many places can an 85 lb dog hide? Finally, I looked at the closed upstairs bathroom door and thought…maybe?
Yep, there he was, standing patiently in the dark. He must have gone inside the bathroom and then bumped the door hard enough so it shut and latched.
My cat, Santi, used to try to gag himself to death with his collar. In his struggle to get the collar off, he would twist his lower jaw underneath it and it would then become stuck in his mouth. One day I came home to find him exhausted and panting with drool running down his fur. Another time he jumped on my chest in the middle of the night, as if to say, “Help me, I did it again!” Luckily, I have since found the right balance of tight to loose for his collar and he is over the stage of trying to get it off.
Buddy slipped in the shower and twisted his ankle yesterday.
Buddy is my rat terrier. He likes to slurp up the water in the shower door gutters because we only give him filtered water in his drinking fountain and we discourage his drinking from the toilet, so he steps into the shower after The Man gets done at 6AM. I heard a scrambling scrabbling after he got out and yup, Buddy was slipping and sliding and is now nursing a swollen leg.
My Shar-pei, after about 10 uneventful years of walking him using a choke chain, got his leg stuck under it and was all twisted up. Luckily, my husband was walking him close to home when it happened (I have zero idea how, although I suspect he was rolling around or something) and was able to call my neighbor, who ran over with a pair of bolt cutters and got it cut off in short order. The problem wasn’t that he was hurt, but he was panicked and with dogs that sometimes results in biting and craziness.
My husband’s family went camping a lot in the 70s and 80s - nice cheap way to go on vacation. The only slightly odd thing about their trips is that they would take their cat with them. One day, kitty got spooked as they were driving down the road and tried to jump out the window. Luckily, my mother-in-law caught Kitty by the tail as she went toward the window. They were driving on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Woulda been bye-bye … eventually, Kitty lived for over 20 years.
The Bad: My wretched Siamese ate some string she found Og knows where when she was about a year old. I had no idea until one day she was in and out of the litter box a dozen times, and every time she came out, she yarfed. She’s a frequent puker even in the best of times, so this didn’t even register until I noticed the pattern of her yarfing immediately after coming out of the litter box. Then I noticed the string trying to make its way out of her nether regions. I grabbed a paper towel and tried to gently coax it out, but no such luck…it was bound up somewhere, and I think that’s why her attempts to poop it out were making her puke. She’d strain to pass it, it would pull in her guts, and she’d yarf.
Oy. That incident cost me about $1000 in emergency surgery and then follow-up care when she developed a raging infection after her 2 week course of antibiotics ran out. Apparently the antibiotics she was only were only keeping the infection slightly in check, not kicking its ass entirely, so when they were gone, it flared up with a vengeance. I seriously thought she was going to die. I had to hold her down and squirt food and water in her mouth with an oral syringe. I’m as paranoid as can be about stray bits of string/yarn now…made all the worse by the fact that I’m a spinner/knitter, so I have to maintain constant vigilance about what I leave laying around.
The Hilarious: Same meezer, in addition to loving to eat string, also likes to lick plastic grocery bags. Drives me to distraction, because if I happen to leave one laying around, she’ll go stand on it and lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick until the crinkling drives me out of my mind. One day I hear her over on the landing of the stairs…lick lick lick lick lick. Just as I’m about to go get up and take the bag away from her, it turns into lick lick lick lick crinkle crinkle SMASH SMASH mew??
At some point in her licking, she had managed to step through the handle of the grocery bag, and got it wedged around her body just in back of her front legs. Then she panicked and started tearing around the house, trying to get away from it, while it flapped behind her like Superman’s cape. I about died laughing. She was traumatized.
