Washing Machine Cat Is a True Survivor

Here’s a great case for making your indoor cat wear a collar with a cat bell: this cat, Felix, got stuck in the washing machine, ran through an entire 35-minute wash cycle, and survived?

According to CNN, Felix’s owner Stefani Carroll-Kirchoff is a dedicated cat owner who checks the washer every time to make sure one of her cats has not crawled in there for fun, sport, or both. However, on the day Felix underwent his harrowing journey, Carroll-Kirchoff closed the door to the washer, set it on an express cycle, and bounced. Thirty-five minutes later, she noticed the laundry was still wet, but when she went to turn the washer back on, she noticed “a single white paw” poking out trough a mess of tangled underpants and jeans: it was Felix, her one-year old cat who had wandered his ass into the washer and found himself in the middle of a situation.

He’s fine, for the record, or, fine enough for a cat who plopped himself in a washing machine and endured the hell of a 35-minute-long express wash cycle. “Although Felix had lost his vision and had pneumonia from the amount of water in his lungs, he survived and is doing better now — he can see and has started eating. He’s still on oxygen,” CNN reports.

Carroll-Kirchoff is taking this pretty hard, but I’d urge her to cut herself a little slack. “I’ve been in shock the last few days,” she said to CNN. “I mean, this is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.” Ma’am, please. It’s going to be okay. This isn’t your fault—it’s the cat’s. Cats are the devil dressed in a fur coat, and do not let them tell you otherwise.

As a cat owner, I spend most of my waking hours asking Daisy (the cat) if she is a good girl, if she needs anything else, and if she has any idea how handsome she truly is. I pass the rest of my time with this beast looking for her: under the bed, behind the couch, next to the box full of beer in the kitchen. Once, I convinced myself she had escaped out the front door and after canvassing my entire apartment building, including the roof, I found her under my bed, dyspeptic and slightly vacant, staring at nothing.

Were I blessed enough to live in a home with a washer and dryer, would I check the washer every time to make sure Daisy wasn’t in there making biscuits in a pile of old sheets? Maybe, but also maybe not. However, because I force her and her cousin/lover Crusty to wear collars with cat bells, I hear them as they waddle through the apartment: jingle jingle. Thump. The skkt-skkt of their nails on the hardwood floor. They think they’re deceiving me, but trust, friends, they are not.