[Vision2020] It's Caturday, Again (July 3, 2010)

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of KLAS-TV (Las Vegas, Nevada) at:

 

(w/video)

http://www.8newsnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=12738733

 

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Professional Cat Catcher Frees Trapped Feline

 

LAS VEGAS - A woman living in the southwest part of the valley has had some
restless nights since her cat got out of the house Sunday night. For four
nights, her tabby Sammy hid underground in a flood control drainage system.
But with the help of a professional cat catcher, Sammy's ordeal had a happy
ending.

 

Sammy ran out of the house, ventured into a culvert and didn't come out.
"You can see from here," Sammy's master Joan Frayer said. "It would have
just been a natural thing for him to go right down here."

 

Frayer calls Sammy her baby. The orange tabby was trapped in the storm
drain, roaming since Sunday in a dark and deep underground maze. She heard
him meowing and crying at night.

 

Frayer glimpsed Sammy Monday night as she looked through a drainage grate.
"He just gets so close, but he doesn't make the turn to go down," she said.

 

So, Frayer called Mary Anne Jones to the rescue. The professional feline
trapper and Las Vegas Valley Humane Society volunteer has saved more than
400 cats since last July. She uses food, traps and contraptions all designed
to lure cats like Sammy.

 

"This is my seventh sewer," Jones said. "We've got to coax him here. Joan is
the only one that can coax him now, because he knows her voice."

 

Jones says the key to rescuing a four-legged critter like Sammy is
understanding a cat's behavior. "You just have to wait. It's a waiting game.
It just takes a lot of patience," Jones said. Jones is optimistic her
strategy will help this cute orange cat find his way out of the storm
system. "I do it, because I love cats. That's what it's all about," Jones
said.

 

The plan worked. Late Wednesday night, Jones retrieved Sammy from the storm
drain, much to Frayer's delight.

 

"He's just a special guy," Frayer said.

 

Jones says every rescue has its own challenges. She recently sat 15 hours in
a garage to wait for a kitten to come out of a car engine.

 

 

Seeya round town, Moscow.

 

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

 

"Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." 

 

-Emo Philips

 

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