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This cat really used up his nine lives.
A Virginia family has been reunited with their cat after the hapless feline was accidentally thrown out with an old couch — only to survive a trip to the dump, get rescued from a garbage pit and then escape again.
“It’s just a happy ending and I’m thankful to everyone who helped,” owner Neal Augustein told The Post. “There were so many times when things could have gone bad. We’re glad to have him home.”
Augenstein, a WTOP radio reporter, said trouble started brewing after Mike, a six-year-old domestic shorthair, stopped showing up for dinner.
“He went missing on a Sunday after and it wasn’t long until my wife and I realized he was gone,” Augustein said.
By Monday, the family was desperately searching the neighborhood for their missing cat.
“I walked around the neighborhood holding a bag of treats, going ‘Mike. Mike. Mike.’ And I would stand in front of sewers, and kept walking around,” he said. “It really was a mystery. That was the hardest part, not knowing where he was.”
But then Augenstein put two and two together and came up with an awful realization: “I’d recently got rid of three couches. I had a sinking feeling the cat was in one of them.”
But when Augenstein went looking for the furniture, he learned the junk crew had already hauled the sofas to the landfill.
That landed Mike at the Fairfax County I-66 Transfer Station, where mountains of garbage are crushed and moved by massive heavy machinery.
The cool cat, however, apparently still had a few of his nine lives left.
Heavy equipment operator Mauricio Martinez spotted a frightened Mike trapped down in the trash pit — stranded on a ledge about 15 feet above the asphalt.
“He was scared and he was trapped,” said Mauricio, who called a supervisor.
“Sure enough, there was a cat on the ledge of the pit,” said Joshua Murphy, assistant superintendent at the landfill.
And with dangerous machinery nearby, the landfill workers quickly launched a rescue mission and maneuvered a loader bucket underneath Mike’s perch and spent about 10 minutes coaxing the terrified tabby into his new ride.
Finally, Mike was safe — or so they thought.
The slippery feline ran away from his rescuers, scampered through a tunnel and disappeared into a storage room, triggering yet another search.
Animal control eventually managed to collar the runaway kitty and take him to a nearby shelter.
They called Augenstein, who rushed there, only to be told Mike was at another shelter — and after an emotional reunion and Mike was finally taken home to his relieved family.
“I’m delighted to have him home,” Augenstein said. “He’s gone back to sitting on my keyboard. At first, his sister, Mochi, was hissing at him because he still smells like the dump, but now things are back to normal.”
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