An 8-year-old cat named Mike is safely back home after seemingly hiding in an old couch that was hauled to a trash and recycling facility in Fairfax County, Virginia, according to local news. Workers found him trapped on a ledge inside a trash pit at the I-66 Transfer Station.
When Mike missed dinner, his guardian searched the neighborhood for two days before suspecting the cat had been inside one of three couches recently hauled to the transfer station.
At the facility, heavy equipment operator Mauricio Martinez spotted Mike while inspecting a loading hopper, an opening where trash drops into trucks waiting below the facility floor.
The vulnerable feline was stranded on a ledge too narrow for him to jump from, about four feet below the pit’s rim and roughly 15 feet above the asphalt floor.
Martinez alerted assistant refuse superintendent Joshua Murphy, and the crew positioned a loader bucket beneath the ledge to give Mike a way out. Murphy then coaxed the frightened cat to jump into it while lead refuse operator George Keller operated the machine.
However, Mike escaped from the bucket and crawled through a tunnel into an unused room beneath the facility floor. Following a call to animal control, an officer arrived and finally caught him.
Thankfully, Mike was microchipped, which helped Animal Protection Police identify his guardian. After four days apart, they reunited at a shelter.
“Just an amazingly happy ending, and I’m so thankful to everyone who played a part in it,” his guardian said.
Lady Freethinker applauds the transfer-station workers, animal services officer, and shelter staff whose efforts helped Mike return home.
