The feline misadventure happened in Fukuyama, Southwestern Japan when the Nomura Plating Factory had an uninvited nocturnal visitor. Though cats are famed for having nine lives, this one who fell into the container of a toxic and potentially deadly substance might be dead by now, for all that we know. The pussy gatecrashing to the unit over the last weekend was revealed when a worker discovered on Monday morning a trail of what appeared to be yellow-brown paw prints leading away from the tank. Also, corroborative evidence surfaced in the form of eerie black and white (as CCTV footage usually is) visuals of a Felidae family member darting across the factory floor.
Well, the container escapade and the subsequent escape to the city at large of the unknown cat did set the cat among the pigeons, so to say, in the town of Hiroshima prefecture. The Company alerted local authorities after watching the footage of the cat leaving and everyone concluded that the cat fell into the container before fleeing. Dire warnings not to handle any unknown cat followed and residents were advised to urgently alert the authorities of seeing any cat loitering around irrespective of healthy or ‘abnormal’ look. Officials have contacted the City Council, the school board and nurseries to warn them about the possible risk.
There was a reason for the cautionary catcall, after all. The tank into which the kitten had taken the plunge holds Hexavalent Chromium, a reddish-brown solution widely used in plating that has been shown to cause lung cancer in humans if inhaled. Effects of exposure can also include kidney and liver damage, nasal and skin irritation and ulceration, and eye irritation and damage, according to the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. It incidentally is a ‘celebrity’ toxin made famous by the movie “Erin Brockovich” released in 2000 which starred Julia Roberts and was based on a true story of groundwater contamination in a small town in California. The cat obviously didn’t take precautions like the workers of the plant who use masks and rubber gloves while at the plant. Hence a mobile, rather lunging, health hazard was out in the open!
Social media users in Japan — a nation of cat lovers, where cat cafes and lucky cat figurines are popular — were quick to sympathize with the feline and blamed the company for the incident. Many sympathized with the discomfort the cat might have felt – more so as it by definition licks the body to clean itself, ending up consuming the poison more and more. For all the lip service, not sure if any animal-right activist would have ventured to wash it if one were to trace it. Who would have belled the cat, anyway?
If the Japanese mouser most probably had a painful death, the historical prey of the species – rats – had a gala time in another part of the world just by indulging in the same sin – intruding on a forbidden place. The scene now shifts to the aging headquarters of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) in the US. The dilapidated structure has become so overrun with vermin that rats have been feasting on confiscated marijuana, according to the Police Superintendent. “The rats eating our marijuana, they’re all high,” she remarked. The rodents, it appears, have joined the rat race with drug addicts! Staffers had enough reason to smell a rat, literally in this instance, as they sometimes find rat droppings on their desks, laments the police boss. Joining the rats, the building is also home to a cockroach infestation, mold, no air conditioning, and elevators and bathrooms that don’t function properly, she added.
However, the pitiable state of the police hq in New Orleans touted as one of America’s top tourist and party cities, may not last long. The police chief ratting on the rats’ rave in public had the desired result. The powers that be acted like a rat up a drainpipe to find a new building across the street for a 10-year lease.
In the aftermath of the catty adventure, the factory in Japan has tightened the access control so that no small animal in the future may fall into the toxic substance. In America, the NOPD officers can look forward to a better workplace where the desks will be neat and mice don’t mess up with mainour.
However, while the poor cat must have perished for sure, the rats are looking for the next hideout to get another high!
Hats off to the guy who said, “Life is not fair”!
