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Cat safe after drain caper
Mitchell firefighters flush trapped kitty out of storm drain

by Diana Wires
Bedford Times-Mail
August 25, 2006
MITCHELL - Smokey the cat is safe and sound after being trapped in a storm
drain for most of Wednesday.

Her owner, Scott Ratliff, saw Smokey's eyes in the storm drain in his yard
about 7 p.m. Wednesday and called for help.

"She was stuck in the storm drain, about 50 feet back there, and my fiancee
had the idea of calling the fire department," Ratliff said. "I told her she
watched too much television, but damned if three firefighters didn't come
out there. It just blew me away that they did that."

By 8:30 a.m. Thursday, Smokey was safe inside Ratliff's home, rolling on the
floor and playing with Ratliff's fiancee, Penny Duncan.

Ratliff and Duncan believe Smokey snuck out after one of them went outside
Tuesday night.

"She'd actually been out there all night," Ratliff said.

Duncan searched for the green-eyed, white-bellied, gray cat most of
Wednesday to no avail. Smokey wasn't found until Ratliff got home from work.

"For some reason, I looked down in that pipe, and I could see her eyes in
the dark," Ratliff said.

Smokey had made her way into the round storm drain pipe, about 8 to 10
inches in diameter, in Ratliff's yard. One end of the pipe was smashed down.

Ratliff couldn't get Smokey out, and Duncan thought of the Mitchell
Volunteer Fire Department.

"We normally don't do that sort of thing," said Fire Chief Brian Fults.
"Dispatch called me and asked if we could do something about that. It
couldn't come out one end (of the pipe) and wouldn't come out the other end.
They were adamant about getting it out, so I called a couple of other
firefighters."

The troupe of Fults, Fred Cassidy and Mark Leatherman first thought of
cutting a hole in the pipe and trying to reach the year-old feline. That
didn't work. But it did scare her to one end of the drain.

"Then they put a fire hose in there and touched her enough that she began to
move up the drain pipe," Ratliff said. "They actually got her about eight
feet from us, and she wouldn't come out. She was loose by then, but she was
so scared she wouldn't move."

Finally the group was down to its last option - flushing the feline out.

"We put a little water in, and it came out," Fults said. "I've been on the
department for 15 years. You don't get too many firsts, but that was a
first."