Category: news

‘Merica Saves A Cat On The 20th Anniversary of 9/11

Humans can be the cruelest of creatures, but sometimes we can be among the most compassionate.

That compassionate side came out on Saturday, the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, at a Miami Hurricanes game of all places.

Craig and Kimberly Cromer are Hurricanes season ticket holders who bring a large US flag to every game, which they’ve been doing for seven years.

Per the Miami Herald:

Early in the second quarter of No. 22 Miami’s home-opener against the Appalachian State Mountaineers, a murmur rose up from the student section at Hard Rock Stadium. The students, many attending their first-ever home game, noticed a cat dangling from the upper deck. The Cromers turned around and first thought it was a dog. Another fan nearby thought it was someone’s kid.

Once the Cromers realized what was happening, they sprung into action. Craig ripped his flag free from his zip-ties, and he and his wife stretched it out to create a landing pad for the terrified cat.

No one’s sure how the cat got into the stadium or ended up on the upper deck railing, but the entire stadium began paying attention when the cat lost its footing, grabbed a wire hanging from the underside and was desperately trying to hold on, its little body dangling precariously.

People seated in the upper deck tried to help, but by that point the black-and-white domestic shorthair was out of reach.

Video of the dramatic incident shows the fearful feline hanging on by its claws. At that point, the entire stadium was invested in the poor kitty’s plight, with thousands of people inhaling nervously as one claw broke away and kitty continued to hold on by a single paw.

The cat had drawn the attention of the game’s announcers as well by that point. There was no way the cat could have known people below were scrambling to break the fall, and kitty inadvertently released droplets of terror pee on the fans in the lower deck.

The Cromers grabbed the flag, “snatched it off the handrail and used it to break the cat’s fall,” Craig Cromer told the Herald.

Catching the little one was “probably the strangest thing that’s happened” to the couple, Kimberly Cromer said.

Footage shows the cat landing on the flag, then quickly tumbling into the section below, eventually ending up in the arms of a kind-looking woman who (we hope) was able to soothe raw nerves.

It was not immediately clear what happened to the cat, but it wasn’t a stray.

“It had a collar so it must be someone’s,” Miami student Dylan Marinov told WPLG, a local news station. Marinov recorded the drama on his smartphone and shared it online.

Hard Rock Stadium’s official Twitter feed said it had made a donation to the Miami Human Society in honor of the kitty’s safe landing, and said stadium staff “wish the cat the best in his remaining eight lives.”

How One Cat Changed The Fortunes Of Two Baseball Teams

The Yankees are 18-3 and the Orioles have lost 19 straight since a cat interrupted play during their Aug. 2 game at Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees were getting drubbed.

It was the eighth inning of a humid night in the Bronx, and the Bombers were facing yet another loss, this time in humiliating fashion — they were down 7 to 1 against the last-place Baltimore Orioles, who smacked four home runs off of recently-acquired starting pitcher Andrew Heaney.

Fans cried out to the Baseball Gods for intervention, and their prayers were heard: With Yankee slugger Aaron Judge at the plate, a tiny shape streaked across the left side of the infield, just behind the foul line.

“The one and two,” Yankees TV play-by-play man Michael Kay said as the Orioles’ pitcher delivered. “Uh oh…”

The shape moved, and the gait gave it away: It was definitely a cat.

“How in the world did he get out here?” color commentator Paul O’Neill asked.

For a moment it looked like play would continue. Then the stadium’s cameras zoomed in on the little interloper, a brownish tabby. The kitty took off toward left field and the crowd went wild.

Orioles left fielder Ryan McKenna stood and watched as the little guy streaked past him, heading for the outfield wall where a door — which remains closed during play — leads to the bullpen.

Seeing no way out, the cat paused, then jumped on the padding that lines the walls, drawing more cheers from the crowd, who encouraged him as he tried to leap the rest of the way over the fence.

By the time a quartet of Yankees security guards tried to corner kitty and he dodged them — not once, not twice but three times! — the crowd was pumped, shouting “MVP! MVP! MVP!”

Almost four minutes elapsed from the time the cat appeared on the field to the moment when a Yankees employee with some brains opened a side door, allowing kitty to escape from what was undoubtedly a stressful situation. Quite an adventure for the little guy.

The Orioles won that game and the troubled Yankees looked like they were headed for a bitterly disappointing season.

The cat changed both narratives, at least for the kind of people who put stock in sports superstition — a group that includes the players themselves.

Rally Cat
Rally Cat, as he’s become affectionately known, on the field at Yankee Stadium. Credit: Bronx Times

Since that Aug. 2 game, the Orioles have suffered through a historically brutal stretch, losing 19 games in a row before finally earning a win last night. That epic losing streak represents the worst run of futility in Major League Baseball in 16 years and stopped just two losses shy of a 21-game losing streak set in 1900. (For British and international readers, you read that right: No other sport is as meticulous as baseball when it comes to continuity and keeping stats. Those statistics go all the way back to the first professional games in 1869. While seasons have been interrupted — most recently last year when the schedule was reduced from 162 to 60 games due to the pandemic — only World Wars I and II have scratched entire seasons from the history books.)

Fearing a curse, the Orioles’ players tried all sorts of things to change their luck, most noticeably growing mustaches. (Note to the Orioles: Playing like a major league team tends to work better than growing facial hair.)

The Yankees, meanwhile, have experienced a renaissance that has them looking like the perennial championship contenders they’re supposed to be, vaulting over five other teams in the standings and breathing down the necks of the first-place Tampa Bay Rays.

With their win over the Braves on Tuesday night, the Yankees are 18-3 since Rally Cat (as he’s now known) appeared in Yankee Stadium, and they’re riding an 11-game winning streak, their longest stretch of wins since 1985. It’s a stunning turnaround for a team that had been disappointing all year, looking lifeless for long stretches.

As for the cat, it’s not clear what happened to him. Local shelter operators and animal rescue organizations haven’t heard anything.

One thing was clear to anyone who is familiar with felines: The kitty’s body language clearly conveyed fear and confusion, and he was desperate to find a way out. Any cat would be, with 35,000 humans making a ton of noise, lights and huge advertising screens everywhere, and additional humans standing on the grass in what must look to cats like some bizarre ritual.

Yankees security didn’t do themselves any favors by the way they were trying to remove the cat, Elyise Hallenbeck, director of Strategy for Bideawee Animal Rescue’s Leadership Giving & Feral Cat Initiative, told the Bronx Times.

“They should be grateful that they weren’t able to lay hands on it, because the cat would have won that,” Hallenbeck said. “The cat was severely and terribly, terribly, frightened.”

Rally Cat, wherever you are, we hope you’re in the care of a loving human and you’re enjoying some delicious yums. You deserve it.

 

 

Pro Tip: Don’t Use Your Gun’s Laser Sight To Play With Your Cat

A woman tried to use a handgun’s laser sight as a toy for her cat, with predictably bad consequences.

A Wisconsin woman narrowly missed out on a Darwin Award and sent her friend to the hospital with a gunshot wound after she used a pistol’s laser sight to play with her cat — while drunk.

The 19-year-old woman was in her apartment in Kenosha, WI, on Tuesday afternoon with a 21-year-old male friend. The two of them downed some shots in the span of about an hour when the woman had a flash of inspiration and picked up her friend’s handgun, using it as a makeshift laser pointer.

She was waving the gun and encouraging kitty to chase it when she unintentionally fired the weapon, hitting her friend in the thigh, according to the Associated Press. She called 911 while he sought help from a next-door neighbor, who helped him tie off the wound with a tourniquet to slow the bleeding.

Cops and paramedics took the 21-year-old victim to a local hospital. So far authorities haven’t said anything about his condition, but there is one indication he may have not been seriously injured, according to Fox affiliate WITI in Milwaukee:

“[The shooter] provided a statement to police, saying she was handling the gun when it “accidentally went off” and said she apologized to [the victim], who told her ‘it was OK.'”

The cat was not hurt when the gun went off, thankfully, although it’s likely kitty bolted and dived under a bed in record time.

While the accidental shooter and her accidental victim have forgiven each other, both of them are now dealing with legal troubles.

The victim was out on bail pending another case, when he was slapped with nine counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety while armed in June 2020. That charge is a felony carrying a 12-year maximum sentence under Wisconsin state law. According to the bail agreement, he wasn’t supposed to possess or carry weapons, and police said they’re planning to charge him for the bail violation.

The woman was charged with one count of “injury by negligent handling of a dangerous weapon,” a Class I felony in Wisconsin. If she’s convicted, she could face a sentence of up to 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Of Claw Sheaths And Sky Raisins

No, the “sky raisins” don’t hurt your cat.

First I’d like to thank everyone who chimed in to reassure me that little Buddy lost his claw sheath, not his entire claw.

I’d never seen such a complete piece of claw come off like that, which is what got me worried. Buddy has the best readers who not only tell him he’s a handsome cat, but look out for his safety too!

The little dude appears just fine and there’s no indication of any injury on his paws.

Which brings us to our next subject: The sudden glut of “sky raisins” for pets living within the cicada “Brood X” territory.

Billions of the large, winged insects have emerged from the ground in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Delaware and parts of Michigan, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and northern Georgia. The current brood, dubbed Brood X, is near the end of its 17-year life cycle, and the cicada’s songs are at their most deafening this summer.

Screenshot 2021-06-15 at 05-34-19 Active Periodical Cicada Broods of the United States - CicadaBroodStaticMap pdf
Source: US Forest Service.

As cats and dogs are wont to do, they go after the larger-than-usual insects, and for them, a successful swat out of the air means a tasty treat.

That has lots of people wondering: Is eating cicadas harmful to my pet?

The answer is no, according to veterinarians who spoke to the New York Times, NPR and other press outlets in recent days.

There’s no truth to the rumors that a fungal toxin which affects cicadas can do any harm to cats and dogs, veterinarians say, and at worst, your pet might throw up the exoskeletons if they’ve snacked on a few of the relatively large insects.

“Most pets who ingest a few cicadas will only develop mild stomach upset,” Tina Wismer, a veterinarian with the ASPCA’s Poison Control Center, told the Times.

That said, veterinarians also caution that you shouldn’t let your furry friend gorge on “nature’s snacks.” One or even a few won’t cause any harm, but making an entire meal of them could make your little buddy sick.

Speaking of meals, lest we judge our four-legged pals for their nasty eating habits, it’s worth nothing that plenty of our own species eat cicadas too. Yuck.

Deepfried_cicada
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Oregon Cat Is An Accomplished Kleptomaniac

Esme the cat once stole 11 masks in one day.

Esme the cat loves bringing gifts back to her human, so when she started bringing home inanimate objects instead of prey, owner Kate Felmet lavished her with praise.

“When she brings them, she comes to the back door and yowls, like ‘Wooooar!’ until I come and tell her she’s done a good job,” Felmet explained.

While Felmet’s glad her three-year-old kitty had stopped going after living creatures, the sheer volume of stuff Esme’s brought back — and her singleminded devotion to collecting it — prompted the Oregon woman to find a way to return the items to people in her neighborhood.

Felmet found a solution when she constructed a cat-shaming lost and found in her front yard, marked with a sign that reads: “MY CAT IS A THIEF” with the stolen items hanging from an attached clothesline.

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Esme the cat.

The sign has a well-drawn likeness of Esme with a glove in her mouth, and a smaller line of text that reads: “Please take these items if they are yours.”

So what does Esme steal? A little bit if everything, apparently.

The most popular objects of her pilfering exploits are gloves and masks, but the little cat burglar has gotten her paws on “several bathing suits, knee pads, rolls of tapes, packages of paint rollers and lengths of fabric.”

“Esme’s thievery began last spring – she brought home 11 masks in one day,” Felmet said. “I was so delighted that she wasn’t bringing me birds and she got a lot of praise – and maybe a few treats for the gifts that weren’t recently alive.”

Esme’s a completist: If she steals one glove, she must have the other.

“She brings them separately but almost always goes back to get the second glove,” said Felmet, who is a medical doctor.

“As soon as I put the sign up, she went for a week of not bringing me anything,” Felmet told WKRG, the local CBS affiliate station. “I had the impression she was a little mad about it.” 

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Esme’s haul from a recent pilfering expedition.

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