BEWARE OF ESCALATORS!
One Saturday morning, my mom needed to run an errand downtown at her office. I was being kind of a brat that morning. I woke mom up trying to break into the bedroom closet, I moved all the sheepskin rugs into the bedroom and I attacked the reindeer rug, and turned over my toy cardboard fighter plane. Since I like to go out with mom, and because I was so restless, Mom took me with her because the whole thing was going to be just riding the train and going up and down a lot of stairs and escalators. I have a stroller, but we didn't use it that morning; we just used a small carrier bag and my harness and leash.
We had a pretty good time riding the T and we talked to a lot of people. I was wearing my sweater, because it was cold, and of course that garnered a lot of comments (I look so handsome in my sweater).
Mom completed her errand, and we headed home. That's when it happened. I like to run up and down stairs, and that includes escalators. Also, because i'm very smart, I also know when we're close to home, and so I like to jump out and run home on my own. So, when we got to the Broadway station, which is "our" subway station, I wanted to run up the escalator, so I pushed out of the carrier, but I had my leash on, so Mom let me go. She had to run to keep up with me!
At the top of the escalator, I felt something bite my right back foot and let out a squawk! because it hurt. Turns out, I had gotten my foot caught between the top step and the hole where the escalator goes back underneath the floor. There have been a lot of horror stories in Boston about people wearing Crocs getting caught in escalators, and it's also a big deal that small children are in danger of injury on escalators. Mom always thought that was kind of an urban legend, but when she saw me with my foot caught, she says she immediately thought of those stories, and had a mental image of me getting sucked into the machinery. She didn't see the emergency button that stops the escalator, so she just grabbed my foot and pulled pulled me out.
She saw blood, and she just instantly reacted. She held my foot really tight and went up the stairs to go to the vet. We live literally just down the street from our vet and take the #9 bus from Broadway station to get there, so at first Mom went to wait for the bus. After waiting maybe a minute, she realised how stupid that was (I could have told her that!) and hailed a cab. Thankfully, a cab stopped almost immediately and took us in. Mom told him what had happened, promised that I wouldn't get any blood on his cab's seat, and assured him that the vet was just up the street about 12 blocks. He turned around to take a look at me and then pulled out a roll of paper towels! Mom took them and held them onto my foot really tightly. It might have hurt, but my foot already hurt, so I couldn't really tell. I just sat quietly on mom's lap while we drove up the hill to the vet.
They know me pretty well at the vet, because I'm just that charismatic. Mom had also been there twice that past week because Angel, my sister, was having bad poops. So Mom walked in with me, and said, "I have an emergency…" and they ushered us straight to the back.
Our regular vet, Dr. Waggener, wasn't there, so we were seen by Dr. Horrigan, who I'd never met before. The took off the paper towels and got a good look at my injury. Because of all the blood, Mom thought I lost a claw – they bleed a lot if you cut them too short. But she says she was really afraid that I'd lost a toe or toes… or part of my foot. Turns out, all that happened is I'd gotten a deep cut on one toe pad. It was a really deep cut, down all the way to the tendon, but it was just the one toe. They glued it with a special glue instead of giving me stitches, so they wouldn't have to worry about removing the stitches later.
I also had to take antibiotics and pain killers, too. They made me woozy, but I was good at taking them, especially because Mom put them in these delicious treats called "Pill Pockets." I had to keep my foot bandaged, and I really didn't like that at all. Mom took me back to the vet a lot to see if we could take off the bandages, but when they looked at my foot, they always said I wasn't ready to have them off yet. Finally, three weeks to the day of the accident, FINALLY, it was okay to take my bandage off. I was super lucky. My foot healed up perfectly fine, and I will barely even have a scar! Just one claw on one toe will be a little crooked, but since Mom keeps my claws trimmed, even that won't bother me.
But let my near-tragedy be a lesson to all the cats and kitten out there: if your mom or dad takes you out somewhere, always listen to what they tell you: Don't ever take off on your own, and especially be careful around machines - ALL machines, even if they seem super harmless.
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FROM: Jake, 12/19/10
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•• This is me... on the escalator, at the vet, riding the bus home (from the vet) and finally at home with my bandaged foot!
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