Rescue 9-1-1 Osaka style

Ok, this happened last Friday night (Sept. 22nd ---I haven't had time to write about it until now), so I'll do my best to recall what happened……..

It was about 11:30pm and Jame and I were watching T.V. All of a sudden we heard a loud noise coming from the alley/road beside our apartment building. Jame opened the door and peaked over the balcony to see what was going on. He said he saw a cat walking down the road. A cat…walking down the street…who cares, right? Well, the thing was that the sound coming from this animal was almost piercing. Jame also said that the cat seemed to have disappeared somewhere, yet we could still hear the noise. Something was obviously wrong with it. I am freaked out by cats, but I am an animal lover (kind of an oxymoron-- I know) so I wanted to go see if it was o.k. We weren't sure if it was hungry or what, so on our way out the door we grabbed a handful of honey puffed wheat. Ha ha ha!

As we were leaving the building, we saw our fellow Canadian friends John and Christine standing on their balcony also wondering what the noise was. We told them we were going to check it out, so they decided to join us. As we were walking down the road, following the distressed meow, we came to a drain. The cat had fallen down the drain!!!!


We shone a light down to try and get a better look, but we didn't see anything. Christine decided to go to the 7-11 on the corner to get some cat food. We dropped some down the drain and waited for the cat to eat it. Five minutes later….ten minutes later….nothing! No sign of the dang cat, but we could still hear in meowing.

I kept saying "What do we do? What are we going to do?" If this happened back home we'd call the SPCA or something, but here…..even if they did have something like that….we weren't sure how to get a hold of them. Jame decided to go and find a koban (police station) to see if anyone who spoke English would know what to do. As he took off, John went up to his apartment to try and find something to stick down the drain and grab the cat. He came back with a large shoehorn and an extension cord. He put the two together in the shape of a noose, stuck it down the drain, and hoped the cat would walk into his trap.

About 10 minutes later we saw the cat eating the food---the only thing was this cat was a baby…it was soooo tiny! As soon as the light hit it, it got spooked, took off and hid. By now it was around 12:30am and Jame had still not returned. I was getting worried thinking that he got arrested because the police maybe thought he was drunk and crazy ("There's a what?"---"A cat fell down where?"). Just as these thoughts were running through my head, two cops on bikes showed up. One spoke English and asked us what had happened and we told her. She was looking down the drain and her partner was going off in Japanese. I got the sense that he thought we were crazy and him being called out here was a complete waste of time! The police officer asked us if they rescued the cat, if we would take care of it. We all said "no" and gave our reasons and at that point I could tell she was about to tell us there was nothing they could do. I basically begged them to try and help us as I couldn't go back to our apartment knowing a kitten was trapped underneath the road.

At this point Jame showed up along with 2 other cops. At the same time a fire truck pulled up with about 5 firefighters. They were all talking to each other in Japanese explaining the situation, while others were trying to ask us questions, but we had no idea what they were trying to ask. Everyone was looking down the drain, along with the drain further down the road on the right hand side. Finally the firefighters had managed to remove both concrete drains. Still no cat! There was a long tube between each drain and they figured that the cat was hiding in there.

**Note—at this point about 2-3 other policeman showed up. 4 Canadians + 7 cops + 5
firefighters ALL trying to rescue this 1 kitten = quite a few curious by-standers**

The firefighters decided to spray some water into the tube to scare the kitten. One firefighter was at one drain with the water and another firefighter was at the other drain waiting to catch the kitten. It worked----the kitten ran right into the firefighter's hands frantically squirming to get loose. As the man let the cat go, it sprinted off. Where did it run to??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

It ran underneath a nearby police car! You should have heard everyone squeal once we all realized where it went! People were looking under the hood, underneath the car, in the wheel wells trying to find this thing, but it was so dark it was near impossible (the cat was gray/black)


About 20 minutes later the kitten somehow got free and ran as fast as it could across the street. Thank god all of the intersection lights were red because the last thing we wanted was for the little thing to get hit by a car!

We profusely thanked everyone for their help. The whole ordeal lasted about 2hours! We went back to our apartment chuckling at what had just happened and how many people showed up! I wonder how that little kitten is doing now?


** Side note – while Christine, John, and I were trying to pull a Macgyver move and rescue the kitten with a shoehorn and extension cord…..this is what Jame was doing:**

So I went to find a police box (Koban) as supposedly they are located every couple of blocks. About 6 blocks later I didn't see anything except a guy coming towards me on a bike. So, I used my best Japanese and said "Sumimasen, Koban wa doko desu ka?" which means "Where is the police station?" He stopped his bike and pointed up the straight to the right as his beer was pouring out of his left hand. I said thank you and began walking thinking he would ride away and after he was gone I would stop walking and turn around because I didn't really understand what he was saying anyway. Unfortunately, as I started walking he got off his bike and began walking with me indicating that he also had to go that way. We walked together to the police station which was about 10 minutes away. As we approached the station he quickly chugged his beer and threw the can into a nearby bush. Oddly enough he remembered to lock up his bike!

I guess he decided to come in with me to translate even though he understood very little English. I guess it was due to the alcohol, but I am not too sure. We walked up to the front desk and there were about 6 officers watching a soccer game on TV. My friend started to tell the police my story and the cops just stared at me blankly. One cop picked up the phone and dialed zero. The phone was passed to me and on the other end was someone who spoke English. I explained my story again and that person relayed the message to the policeman in Japanese. He smirked and told his colleagues who all began to chuckle. After about 10 minutes the operator told me they would they would send a couple of officers over to the apartment to check out the situation and they might have to contact the fire rescue team as this type of thing wasn't police work (i.e. – getting a stray cat out of a drain). I was hoping that one of them would give me a ride back because I was a ways from home. They just looked at me and said "O.K" so I said "O.K" back and left to go home. After my long walk about I arrived to see the police on their bikes had already beat me.

September 30, 2006