we pull into the DQ parking lot and i pop the hood to see what the problem is. so i'm poking around making sure nothing's touching the headers or the belts or the radiator. leslie thinks the smell's coming from the other side, near the battery. and then i hear what sounds like a kid crying: 'waaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr'. my gf jumps back immediately, and i'm still poking around, thinking it's some kid in the parking lot. then i hear it again, and realize it's coming from the frickin engine bay!!
there's a freakin CAT in my engine!!
so i'm like.. oh sh*t! what do we do?? i look in, and this poor guy is allllll the way at the bottom, BEHIND the engine block. basically mashed in between the block and the booster, lookin pretty damn stuck. my gf goes to a resturant and gets a bucket of water, and i dump it all over the poor bastard, to cool him off, since his a-- is right on the back exhaust primaries.
so while we're waiting, i jack the car up to see if we can get it out from beneath the car. looks like a no go. i take the wheel off the see if he can get out through there -- from there i can see the cat's face. he see us looking in and starts meowing. really sad. but there's no room to pull him out. the animal control cop comes, and wants to try and pull him out through the top, so i take off the strut bar, take out the battery, and pull off the battery plate. then the guy takes this pole with a noose on the end of it, puts it around the cat's neck and pulls like hell. doesn't do any good and looks like it hurt the hell outta the cat. he doesn't know what else to do, and goes off to another call.
so then i figure the best thing to do is take the header primaries off from the bottom and make enough room to try to pull him out from underneath. so i have a go at this for about an hour, in the parking lot while this cat is meowing and crying.. and i just dont have the tools or the space to get them off there. so i take the bumper off, so we can have the car towed to a shop. we had to call around to 4 or 5 shops before we found one that would even help, and then called the cop to meet us there.
so then, the shop guy unbolts the headers, but didn't really try my idea of pulling him out from beneath. i don't know why... then they bring the car down and take a crobar to try and shift the block so maybe the cat can get out. the mechanic pries with the bar while the cop keeps tugging on this cat's neck, and none of it works... the mechanic thinks it's not THAT tight, that if the cat were knocked out, maybe he'd be limp enough to pull out. so the cop goes back to the car to get on the radio and talk to a city vet.
in the meantime, it's going on 5 hours that this poor cat has been stuck. the shop owner went out and bought some milk for the cat when we got there, so now i gave him some, and he drank a little. it was just sad... he was hardly moving, and didn't meow.. his eyes were all glassy and half closed. it looked like he was dying.
it was already past closing time, and the shop guys wanted to go home. so we push the car out into the parking lot and they close up and bail. the cop came back and told us they were going to put the cat to sleep and then pull him out.
i'd spent the better half of the day working to get this poor cat out.. i don't think i really thought he was going to die. it just felt like it was all for nothing. so the vet came and did her thing. me and the girlie walked off a ways and sat around until they took care of business.
the cop said once the cat had died, he hardly had to pull at all to get him out.. it made me think i should have just left the car there and hopefully the cat could have gotten out on his own. i did suggest that, but then who knows...? what if the cat's still there the next day, been suffering all night? at any rate the cop didn't want to take that chance and have to come out again the next day -- he'd already spent too much time on the one call. likewise they didn't have the resources to tranquilize the cat instead of euthanize it.
well.. that's the story. my engine bay is full of cat hair and still smells kinda burnt. i don't even like cats. but still.. it was one of the worst independence eves in recent memory
