"Victor M. Martinez" wrote:

Maya woke me up early this morning by pushing the fish food containers
from the stand to the floor. She is our official "gravity tester". I went
back to sleep thinking nothing of it. Some time later, we woke up to the
sound of something crashing around under the bed. We figured it was just
the cats wrestling or something, but the sound would not stop and it
sounded serious. We turned the light on and saw that Rufous had his head
caught in a relatively small fish food container! He was running around
banging his head all over the place. We managed to grab him and pull the
food container from his head. He just sat there, panting and being
non-responsive. I was very concerned and grabbed my vet manual to check
for signs of danger. It was a good 10 minutes until he stopped panting,
and for a few minutes his eyes seemed to not respond to light. I called
the emergency vet clinic and they told me to observe him for a few more
minutes, that it was probably just very scared. "If he's still panting in
10 minutes, bring him over", the lady on the phone said. I told Tom to get
dressed in case we had to drive to the ER.
Thankfully, Rufous started calming down a bit, and paying attention to his
surroundings. He didn't want anything to eat at first, so I just held him
for about an hour. Then he started purring, very loud, while still
breathing hard. Finally he got up and went to have some breakfast. He's
now asleep with his brother on the window perch.
Not a good way to start a Sunday morning! He almost gave me a heart
attack! I'm just very thankful he's ok.

Astonishing the scrapes cats can get into when you think they're
perfectly safe! I used to have a furry mouse on a long elstic, designed
to be hung from a door-frame. The cats seemed to enjoy it, and it
appeared to be safe enough for unsupervised play .... Until the day
Melisande came bouncing into the living-room with the elastic wound
around one paw, the mouse attached. My living-room was some little
distance from the doorway containing the hanger, but the elastic had
stretched with age. Dealing with a panicked cat with elastic tightly
wrapped around one leg, when it was attached to a door frame in another
room, had me nearly as panicked as the cat. Fortunately, I had a
scissors handy, and once the overstretched elastic was cut from its base
half a room away, it was easy enough to unwind from the cat. Melly
suffered no ill effects, but there've been no more toys of that sort.
I'm not home much, so I like to have "interactive" toys she can play
with on her own, but that one didn't operate quite as intended.