Cat Tales: Yoda Escapes Death!

A few weeks ago, I gave a brief summary of Yoda's near brush with death in the comments section of this blog post. @arthuradamson asked if he could use the story as the basis for one of his short stories of cats having near misses with death. I was honored but thought that too many details of Yoda's story were left out so I decided to write a blog post detailing his entire encounter.

The story of Yoda all started many years ago. At the time, I owned a house in the city and was renting rooms to help pay my mortgage. My brother was one of the renters and we had a great time living together. One of the other renters (we'll call him Bob to protect his identity) was a bit of a misguided young man who liked to party. One day Bob asked me if he could get a cat. Even though I was a cat person, as a home owner, I still had some concerns about the potential damage animals could cause to my rental property. I took some time to think about it but decided that Bob could get a cat with the understanding that they would have to leave if the cat became destructive.

Left: My brother Mike and Yoda. Right: Yoda the Great!

A few days later, Bob showed up with a cute little kitten named Yoda. Well of course, I immediately fell in love with the little critter. Yoda was super cute and calling him feisty would be an understatement; he was constantly amusing us with his antics and playful aggressiveness.

Unfortunately, Bob wasn't a very good caretaker of Yoda. While he meant well, he just wasn't responsible. More then a few times he forgot to feed Yoda, sometimes even forgetting to buy cat food, and Yoda would go hungry. During this time, Yoda learned to scavenge food and developed a taste for bread. We would jokingly call him the bread thief because you couldn't leave any food on the counter without Yoda getting into it. He would steal whole loaves of bread which we would later discover, half devoured, under a bed or other hiding place. I didn't like how Yoda was being neglected so I ended up buying him cat food a few times when I noticed he had run out.

Left: Yoda makes a friend. Right: Naps are good!

Eventually, Bob decided to move out. I was very concerned about Yoda's welfare because I wouldn't be around to help take care of him so I had a long talk with Bob and managed to convince him to leave Yoda with my brother and me.

Everything went well for a few weeks then one day we noticed Yoda was missing. We looked all over the place for him. Finally we found him hiding in a small crawl space behind the washer and dryer. When he would occasionally let out a disturbing sounding yowl we knew something was wrong. We tried everything to coax him out from his hiding place but for whatever reason he wouldn't come. The space was too tight for someone to crawl into to reach him. Eventually, we made a lasso and tied it to the end of a broom handle so we could pull him out by the neck.

Even once he was free he was still acting weird; sometimes he would scream and thrash and would also refuse to eat or drink. I was becoming increasingly concerned and took him to the vet after a few days of this upsetting behavior. The vet looked Yoda over but didn't really know know what to make if his distress. She did diagnose him with extreme dehydration which she remedied with a shot of saline under the skin but otherwise she couldn't offer any insight.

Yum, milk!

I took him home and after a few more days passed by I noticed a lump had appeared behind Yoda's ear. We took him back to the vet where she took an X-ray which revealed a sewing needle broken in two pieces in his upper throat area. While I had no idea where he would have found a needle, I did wonder if the needle broke when we lassoed him.

The vet offered to operate to remove the needles and I really had to think about whether or not to proceed. The vet bills were starting to pile up and I wasn't well off financially at the time. Still, Yoda was such a sweet cat, I had come to love that little bugger, I wanted to give him a fighting chance. I asked my brother if he would chip in to help cover the cost and when he agreed I gave the vet the go ahead to operate.

After the operation, the vet told us that she was unable to retrieve one of the pieces of the needle as it was too close to Yoda's brain. She suggested that we wait to see if the piece would move into a better position to retrieve in a later operation. This news was discouraging because I couldn't afford to pay for another operation. Yoda stayed overnight at the vet before we picked him up and of course as soon as we got home Yoda ripped his stiches out! His open wound was pretty gory and we could see the veins in Yoda's neck. Luckily, he wasn't really bleeding but he was leaking a bit of "neck juice." So off we went to the animal emergency clinic in the middle of the night to get more stitches and vet bills. This time Yoda was given a cone before we returned home.

Yoda took a while to recover; he spent a lot of time hiding under the bathroom sink, his new favorite hiding spot. Slowly, he seemed to get a bit better and began eating a bit of soft food. I also remember him getting some runny poop on his cone. He would turn around in the litter box to bury his turd and the cone would come into contact in the process. What we don't do for our fur babies!

Even though he lives with my brother now, Yoda and I are still good buds!

After a couple of weeks, we took Yoda back to the vet for another X-ray to see where the remaining needle had moved to and it had disappeared; it couldn't be found anywhere in his body! Basically, a miracle! We weren't sure whether he had spit it out, passed it, or if it had dislodged when he pulled his stiches out. Either way, we couldn't be more happy with this news.

Once Yoda recovered his strength he was soon back to his usual antics of scaring guests and causing mayhem. Even though he was now well fed he continued to steal loaves of bread! Eventually, I sold the house and Yoda moved in with my brother for good. Today he is 14 years old and happy. I haven't taken care of him for years but he is still my favorite puss!

The legend of Yoda continues!