Fat cat Eddie gets snatched up by hawk, but dropped in neighbor's garden due to weight
Saturday, July 16th 2011, 4:00 AM
Molloy for News
Eddie, the fat white cat, was carried by a hawk for 50 feet, before the hawk could carry no more.
Molloy for News
Eddie lounging in the upper West Side.It was dawn on the upper West Side the other day when a young woman heard a screech usually heard in the countryside: the raspy kreeing of a red-tailed hawk capturing its prey.
It got louder and more horrible as it suddenly mixed with the mews of a terrified cat. Her beloved cat, Eddie.
She ran out to her fifth-floor terrace where Eddie had been stretched out on a bench and saw nothing but "fur, broken nails, and feathers."
The woman, a beer microbrewer who doesn't want her name in the paper, looked everywhere, including nearby Riverside Park, where, "all the bird/park people said he was surely dead."
She was heartbroken. Eddie was more than a pet. He had been a companion, a friend, in the sometimes lonely four years since she had moved to Manhattan and adopted him at the ASPCA.
"I walked for hours all over the neighborhood and up Riverside Drive, sobbing, looking for his body," she said.
"I went to all the hawks' nests. I put up signs with Eddie's photo."
I don't know about you, but I shudder to think that hawks, who have increasingly set up house here, are preying on pets.
"The diet of a red-tailed hawk is made up primarily of small mammals such as squirrels, chipmunks, rodents and rabbits," said Sarah Aucoin of the Parks Department's Urban Park Rangers.
"There was an instance of a hawk attacking a Chihuahua in Bryant Park in 2003. It is entirely possible that a red-tailed hawk could prey upon a small cat."
That, of course, is where this story is heading: You see, Eddie's no featherweight.
No offense, but when I saw him last month, he was huge, an all-white 15-pounder with light-green eyes. Eddie's one fat cat.
Maybe the hawk thought Eddie was a plump white rabbit stretched out on the deck like a country breakfast. No way the 4-pound raptor could carry him over the brownstone rooftops to his nest in the park.
The answer is, he couldn't. Not very far, anyway. He made it about 50 feet.
"He dropped him in the garden of a building a few doors down," Eddie's amazed owner said.
"The tenant was awakened by a huge thud in his garden. He ran out and found his garden umbrella toppled over, and a cat in the corner, meowing."
Fat Eddie had been dropped at least five stories.
"I can only imagine Eddie bounced off the umbrella like in the cartoons," the owner said.
When the flabbergasted neighbor with cats falling from the sky went out that afternoon he spotted the woman's flyers and called.
"I have your cat!" he exulted. She ran down, fetched Eddie and took him to a vet.
"He checked out fine, other than some minor cuts, scrapes and bruises," the woman said. "The vet says he's an amazing cat. And he is."
Yeah, but he's lost at least a couple of those nine lives.
"The moral of the story is essentially: Your flaws can be an asset," she surmised. "In Eddie's case, his chubbiness saved him."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/07/16/2011-07-16_fat_cat_eddie_gets_snatched_up_by_hawk_but_dropped_in_neighbors_garden_due_to_we.html#ixzz1SIQNq5tO
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