Category: Animal House
Fat cat Eddie gets snatched up by hawk, but dropped in neighbor's garden due to weight
Joanna Molloy
Saturday, July 16th 2011, 4:00 AM
Eddie, the fat white cat, was carried by a hawk for 50 feet, before the hawk could
carry no more.
It was dawn on the upper West Side the other day when a young woman heard a screech
usually heard in the countryside: the raspy kreeing of a red-tailed hawk capturing
its prey.
It got louder and more horrible as it suddenly mixed with the mews of a terrified
cat.
Her beloved cat,
Eddie.
She ran out to her fifth-floor terrace where Eddie had been stretched out on a bench
and saw nothing but "fur, broken nails, and feathers."
The woman, a beer microbrewer who doesn't want her name in the paper, looked everywhere,
including nearby Riverside Park, where, "all the bird/park people said he was surely
dead."
She was heartbroken. Eddie was more than a pet. He had been a companion, a friend,
in the sometimes lonely four years since she had moved to
Manhattan
and adopted him at the
ASPCA
.
"I walked for hours all over the neighborhood and up Riverside Drive, sobbing, looking
for his body," she said.
"I went to all the hawks' nests. I put up signs with Eddie's photo."
I don't know about you, but I shudder to think that hawks, who have increasingly
set up house here, are preying on pets.
"The diet of a red-tailed hawk is made up primarily of small mammals such as squirrels,
chipmunks, rodents and rabbits," said
Sarah Aucoin
of the Parks Department's Urban Park Rangers.
"There was an instance of a hawk attacking a Chihuahua in
Bryant Park
in 2003. It is entirely possible that a red-tailed hawk could prey upon a small
cat."
That, of course, is where this story is heading: You see, Eddie's no featherweight.
No offense, but when I saw him last month, he was huge, an all-white 15-pounder with
light-green eyes. Eddie's one fat cat.
Maybe the hawk thought Eddie was a plump white rabbit stretched out on the deck like
a country breakfast. No way the 4-pound raptor could carry him over the brownstone
rooftops to his nest in the park.
The answer is, he couldn't. Not very far, anyway. He made it about 50 feet.
"He dropped him in the garden of a building a few doors down," Eddie's amazed owner
said.
"The tenant was awakened by a huge thud in his garden. He ran out and found his garden
umbrella toppled over, and a cat in the corner, meowing."
Fat Eddie had been dropped at least five stories.
"I can only imagine Eddie bounced off the umbrella like in the cartoons," the owner
said.
When the flabbergasted neighbor with cats falling from the sky went out that afternoon
he spotted the woman's flyers and called.
"I have your cat!" he exulted. She ran down, fetched Eddie and took him to a vet.
"He checked out fine, other than some minor cuts, scrapes and bruises," the woman
said. "The vet says he's an amazing cat. And he is."
Yeah, but he's lost at least a couple of those nine lives.
"The moral of the story is essentially: Your flaws can be an asset," she surmised.
"In Eddie's case, his chubbiness saved him."
jmolloy@nydailynews.com
Wow, what an amazing story! Guess his fat saved his life!
She's heartbroken by him getting snatched by a hawk, understandable. She doesn't, however, love him enough to not make him extremely overweight, which can easily risk his life due to a whole list of different conditions. She must really love that cat.
And complaining about Redtail Hawks, a native species, catching pets, which are invasive species. Ah the irony.
Cats acount for more species devestation among songbirds than any other human-inspired influence. My wife loves cats, I know many people like cats, and, well when they're happy they're fine. But I just find it ironic.
Who would win this debate: The pro-cat people, or the natural environmental people?
Well on an episode of The Most Extreme it did say the house cat was the most extreme killer since they killmany different species of birds and insects.