This story takes place long before Killer, our station cat, moved in.
There was a large fire in my area and I was assigned as the Staging Officer. It was late into my tour, which meant I’d be stuck long after I should have gotten home. At one point during the incident, a firefighter, holding a box, moved past at least eight other EMS people and handed it to me. There was a cat inside, he told me, and he hoped I could take care of it.
I will always wonder why this stranger gave me, of all people, the cat. It’s as if he knew I had a bag of cat treats in my command car and cat food in my locker.
I brought the cat to the command car and slowly opened it. Inside a pair of wide eyes glared at me in fear. The all-black cat blended into the darkness of the box. I dug out my cat treats and dropped a few in the box. I also cut down my water bottle to make a little bowl out of what was left in it. The cat looked OK, no burns or breathing issues. He let me pet him cautiously. I tried to reassure him with the soft, cat baby talk that makes my own kitties know I’m wrapped around their manipulative, fluffy paws.
I closed up the box again, poked a few holes, and resumed my location at the fire as I tried to figure out what I was going to do with kitty. Taking him home was not an option. My house was already overflowing with furry and feathered housemates as a result of my terrible record of keeping animals ‘temporarily’ until other situations materialized.
It was an early Saturday morning and any rescues I knew of only had their answering machines on for the weekend. I was exhausted, had to be at work again in a few hours, and didn’t need a new project added to my day. I decided to bring him to my station, set him up in one of our large, empty storage closets, and postpone my rescue mission until the next day when I would be off. I let the day supervisors know of my plan and put a note on the door warning of the small predator inside.
The closet I put him in was a meter room. It was about 5 feet x 5 feet and the only things in it were meters mounted on the left wall and some pipes in various places. The pipes and tubing were mostly thin and vertical and the meters were at least 5 feet off the floor. The room could only be accessed with a key on the lieutenant’s key chain.
I didn’t see the point in telling our new captain of this small development because the cat would be gone before she came back in. I rationalized that she would, of course, be OK with it if she did know. At any rate, I ascribed to the philosophy of it being easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.
That evening when I came back to work, the station was abuzz about the cat in the closet. Back in those days, an animal at the station was a real novelty. Everyone was interested in him and it seemed that throughout the day many people had opened the door to get a peek at our visitor. But when I opened the door to check him, he was missing.
“What happened to the cat?” I asked one of the EMTs walking by.
“I don’t know. He was in there before. He was real mean,” he told me.
I asked who had taken him out. No one knew.
I continued to ask when I saw another EMT who seemed to know.
“I went to check out the cat,” he said. “He looked scared and he jumped on the pipe. I think he’s feral. He kept climbing.”
“But where is he now?”
“I think he kept climbing,” he shrugged. What was that supposed to mean?
I gave the closet another look. Most people would assume that the ceiling and the walls were attached. It looked that way from the ground. Between the ceiling and the wall was steel beam that, from the ground, looked like it was attached to the wall. But could there be a gap? We got a ladder and discovered that, yes, there was about one foot of space between the ceiling and the wall.
What kind of misfit put this place together? What was the point of that gap? And how did the cat know?
I shined a light into the gap and heard a hiss. Once again I saw those eyes peering up in the darkness. I had no idea how the cat had made it up there. Most of the piping was vertical. The horizontal areas of pipe were very, very high up. This cat had skill. I stuck my hand in the gap to reach the cat and got scratched. It was going to be a long night.
Two other women whose shifts had ended came over to help. Behind the wall, there seemed to be a square made out of cinder blocks that the cat was in. It was about one foot below the top of the wall.
We took turns injuring our hands by trying to lift the cat out of the cinder block square. He was either stuck or didn’t like the idea of being rescued, or both. It took a terrible angle to get our arms in a position to pick up kitty and when we did he fought us. We tried wearing gloves to minimize the blood loss but he would slide out of our hands with them on. Things were getting desperate after more than an hour of trying.
I decided to go in naked, no gloves. I was going to take my bites and scratches and just get the cat out once and for all. I figured that I would just deal with the injuries. How bad could it be?
I stuck both arms in. I felt the cat and got my hands around him. I suddenly felt hot pain in my hands as the cat scratched me. I held on. I started to lift him up and felt him clamp down with his razor-sharp teeth, the ones that are designed to kill things. The pain was unbelievable. But I held on. I felt my hands get wet with my own blood. I almost had him over the wall. Then he squirmed and I lost him. The cat won.
I pulled my bloody hands out of the gap. It was worse than I thought. They were completely red with blood and swelling. Parts of my hands were blue. I could barely move my fingers. Blood continued to pour as I wrapped my hands in some trauma dressings. A small crowd had gathered for the rescue event and now they gathered around the spectacle of my injuries.
The mob told me I had to go to the hospital. I agreed to go though I stalled for a time, wanting to know what the game plan for the cat would be.
A collective decision was made to get in touch with ESU. The Emergency Service Unit of the NYPD is a specialty unit designed to handle unusual situations. They have all kinds of special tools and tactics. Surely they could help us with the cat.
We called them unofficially, at the precinct, to see if they could stop by and give us advice or loan us something that could help. They came over quickly and told us they would be taking over the rescue operation. There was no way, they told us, that cat was not going to be rescued.
One of them saw my hands and told me that I should have worn gloves. I told him about the friction issues and he assured me they had gloves that would be able to grip the cat. I was skeptical but they had experience with situations like this, probably. I was just grateful that people with actual tools were going to work on this. That cat was in good hands. I decided to walk up the hill to the hospital that was next to our station.
It was an eye-opening experience to be at the hospital for an extended period of time, instead of the shorter intervals we normally spend there.
The hospital by our station, on a weekend, is a madhouse of all kinds of mayhem. I witnessed an entertaining argument between two people who didn’t speak the same languages. I saw stitches being given to someone with a gash down the entire length of her leg, and I watched another family demand that their adult son be transferred to a ‘better’ hospital despite getting excellent, attentive care.
I was parked in the minor trauma area, far away from the influx of madness but close enough to watch. I sat in a comfortable chair with my hands wrapped in loose, bloody bandages awaiting my tetanus, rabies, and antibiotic injections.
I had been waiting a long time when I noticed one of the ESU officers walking into the ER. His hands were covered in trauma dressings as well and they were becoming red. The hospital staff parked him next to me.
“There’s no friction with those gloves,” he said. I nodded and showed him my hands again.
As we sat and waited, the officer told me that they do many animal rescues. He said it’s much easier dealing with dogs rather than cats because even though dogs are more dangerous they are also more predictable.
“All bets are off with felines,” he told me. I understood.
It was just the two of us for a short time until a third set of bloody hands made their way into our now-exclusive section of the ER. One of my coworkers had given the gap one last shot before they started using power tools to break down the wall.
“They’re breaking down the wall?” I asked, somewhat horrified. Good Lord, what was the new captain going to say?
This whole operation had my name all over it.
I spent much time sitting there waiting and imagining the various scenarios. I pictured myself giving our Captain an explanation of how her meter room had been dismantled. None of them ended with “Why Nancy, that was a great idea!” The pain in my hands lessened under the weight of what was to come.
It turned out, the remaining cop had only to remove two cinder blocks for kitty to be liberated. One of the women took him home. She planned on taking him to an animal rescue organization she helped out at.
In the meantime, three uniformed people sat in a row in the trauma room. Six bloody hands loosely wrapped in bandages awaited treatment. We looked as if we had all been victim to a horrific razor blade attack. People walking by would look at us with concern asked what terrible disaster had transpired.
“Cat,” we’d answer in unison.
One small cat had done all of us in.
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