Rufous' close call

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.

Victor M. Martinez

http://www.che.utexas.edu/~martiv