“Yeah, hi, I have kind of a particular emergency here.”
On Sunday evening in Portland, Oregon, an emergency dispatcher received a call that perhaps she had never received before.
Lee Palmer, local father, called 911 to report that the family cat had gone berserk and attacked his 7-month old son. Upset over the incident, Palmer had kicked the cat in the rear end, sending the cat into a deeper realm of crazy. Palmer, along with his wife, child, and dog, retreated to the bedroom where they were then trapped by the frantic feline.
“I kicked the cat in the rear, and it has gone over the edge,” he told the dispatcher.
According to the Oregonian, Palmer had first tried to call animal services about Lux, the 22-pound Himalayan, but that didn’t work.
When asked by the 911 dispatcher if the baby needed medical attention, Palmer said that he only suffered “very small puncture wounds” on his head. But that wasn’t the pressing problem.
“We’re trapped in the bedroom, he won’t let us out of our door … He’s very, very, very, very hostile.
“He’s kind of a violent cat already … he’s charging us, he’s at our bedroom door,” Palmer said, then asked, “Do you hear him?”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear him,” said the dispatcher, who remained professional despite the odd circumstance. “I know it’s kind of scary, let’s just try to stay as calm as we can, OK?”
The frightened father asked if the cops could come and the dispatcher put him on hold while she asked her boss if it’s “okay” to call the police about this kind of incident. When her boss approved, Palmer seemed relieved.
“Tell them to be careful, the police,” he meekly laughed.
Once the police entered the apartment at The Yards at Union Station on the Northwest side of the city, the large cat ran into the kitchen and jumped on the top of the refrigerator. Using a dog snare, the officers caught the cat and put him in a pet carrier. Fortunately, no one else was injured.
Sergeant Pete Simpson later said that while angry dogs are common he couldn’t recall another incident involving a hostile feline in his 20 years on the force.
“The cat remained behind bars in the custody of the family and officers cleared the scene and continued to fight crime elsewhere in the city,” the police said in a press release on Monday.
“We are debating what to do,” Palmer said. “We definitely want to keep (the cat) away from the baby and keep an eye on his behavior.
“I swear I have never seen anything like it.”
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