Cat Named 'Piper-Venom' Rescued Out of Drain Pipe After Being Stuck for Days

Crews spent about eight hours trying to rescue a cat from inside a drain pipe.

ByABC News
January 21, 2015, 1:17 PM

— -- Here is some purr-fect news coming out of Miami.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue crews, a venom response team, technicians from a local animal clinic and plenty of concerned citizens helped rescue a cat Tuesday that had been stuck in a drain pipe underneath a local Walgreens pharmacy for at least two days.

"Sunday somebody heard that cat in the pipe and they tried to coax it out with food and people called fire rescue and they couldn’t get it out,” Lory Nelson, Knowles Animal Clinic’s outreach manager, told ABC News. “Then finally they called us and so I grabbed a technician and we headed over there. It was a team effort and we truly played ‘MacGyver.’”

After eight hours of trying various rescue options like flushing the pipes with water and pumping air into them in hopes of coaxing the kitty out, rescuers were able to wrap a rope around the animal and pull it up to safety.

They are not exactly sure how the poor cat got down into the 5-foot-deep drain pipe, but with the help from the venom response team, a group that is familiar with these types of rescues as alligators often get stuck in drains in Florida, they were able to finally get the cat to safety.

Now the kitty, who is “doing remarkably well considering all he went through,” has been appropriately named Piper-Venom, and is resting up at the Knowles Animal Clinic.

“He’s becoming very friendly, becoming handleable, his temperature is back up, and he’s feeling very good,” said Nelson. “He’s becoming un-camera shy.”

No word on if he’s used up one of his nine lives throughout the entire ordeal.