My washing day CAT-ASTROPHE!
Theo went for a spin in the wash – and lived to meow the tale!
Curiosity almost killed 11-week-old tabby Theo – when he accidentally went for a spin in his mum’s washing machine.
When distraught owner Katie Gay saw a limp and sodden Theo in the washing basket afterwards, his eyes shut and tongue out, she feared the worst. “You’ve washed the cat, Mum,” she yelled at her equally upset mother Carole.
It was a busy Friday morning. Katie, 39, was rushing to get her kids Imogen, 16, and Izzak, six, off to school. Her mum Carole, 68, had stopped by the family’s Ipswich, Qld, home to help. Theo, who weighed less than a kilo (and was then known as Cleo, before Katie realised “she” was a he!) was accidentally scooped up by Carole with Imogen’s bed sheets and sent through the front-loader’s 15-minute express washing cycle.
“We only realised when Mum noticed some kitty poo on the washed sheets,” recalls Katie. “I looked in the basket and that’s when I saw him lying there.”
Katie’s partner, Kerrin Farmer, gently picked up the unresponsive kitty and, after a few desperate moments, was able to detect a faint heartbeat. He rushed Theo to the vet, a terrifying 15-minute drive away, leaving a Katie and a guilt-ridden Carole at home.
“I felt sick. All I could think was, ‘How are we going to tell the kids?’ especially Izzak, because Theo had been a present for his birthday three weeks earlier,” says Carole.
Incredibly, after some oxygen, Theo revived and the vet couldn’t believe he’d escaped with only some minor scratches. “We’ve had to look out for brain damage, too, but so far he seems fine... apart from chasing his own tail in the mirror and trying to fight our much bigger and grumpier cat Jagger!” laughs Katie. Carole thinks the fact the washing machine was a front-loader, which uses less water, probably saved Theo’s life. “But how he survived the spin cycle, I don’t know,” she says, adding she now triple-checks the cat’s whereabouts before loading laundry in the machine. As for Theo, he came home that same night, wolfed down his dinner and has been purr-fectly fine since. The cat-astrophe cost Katie $1500 in vet’s bills but she says it was worth every cent to have freshly-laundered Theo back with the family. “He’s our little miracle,” she says. “He’s not even scared of the washing machine. But I think he’s only got seven lives left now!”
‘I looked in the basket and that’s when I saw him lying there’