It took a whole community to save one of the nine lives of Harding the cat.

The cat, who suffered severe burns and other injuries after getting caught inside a muffler, needed a lot of help.

The community members, organizations and businesses who stepped up to help and heal Harding include students and staff at a St. Paul high school; several police officers and firefighters as well as the employees of St. Paul Animal Control; the staff and volunteers of Pet Haven, a foster-based rescue organization; the staff of Parkview Cat Clinic in Inver Grove Heights; a loving foster family; and others who assisted both in person and virtually.

“Everyone just came together for this little dude,” said Kerry D’Amato, executive director of Pet Haven.

D’Amato said she thinks the cat responded to the community’s love and support.

“In my more than 30 years in the rescue landscape, I’ve never seen anything like it — I’ve never seen an animal survive a burn this bad, ever,” she said. “His will to survive was phenomenal.”

Stuck

This cat tale begins at Harding Senior High School in St. Paul on the afternoon of Friday, April 3.

It was spring, but it was chilly: There was a bite to the wind, with a high temperature of 51 degrees and a low of 35, according to the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service.

Rich Mayen, a longtime coach who is still helping out post retirement, was working with the girls softball team in the fieldhouse when he first heard the call over the intercom after school.

“The announcement was for the owner of a black car that was in handicapped parking to please come outside right away,” said the coach.

The announcement, Mayen recalls, said the vehicle was a Honda. Since his car is a Hyundai, he initially disregarded the plea.

Eventually, though, he realized it was his car; he headed over to the parking lot, where he found police officers waiting.

“I said, ‘What’s the problem?’” Mayen said. “They said, ‘A cat crawled up your rear muffler.’”

A cat?

“One of the cops asked me, ‘Is this your cat?’” Mayen said. “I said, ‘No, I don’t have cats, I’m allergic to cats.’”

Mayen had driven to the school from his home in Oakdale, a journey straight from the underground parking spot in his apartment building. The parking area would not have been an easy place for cats to roam, Mayen says, especially since it’s a pet-free building, other than service/emotional support animals.

Maybe this was an East Side kitty?

“It was pretty cold out,” Mayen recalled. “We figured it was a stray, probably crawled up into the car for warmth.”

Mayen wondered, though:

“How did you know it was there?” he said he asked the police. “One of the cops said kids coming out from the back of the school saw a tail and leg sticking out from underneath the bumper. They didn’t know if the cat had been run over or what.”

The cat was alive, but stuck.

Rescued

Mayen, a Vietnam War-era veteran who worked in construction, keeps plenty of tools in his vehicle, which was fortunate for the assembled rescuers and good Samaritans.

“It took us awhile to try the different options,” Mayen said.

None of the options worked, unfortunately; the muffler’s placement on the Hyundai was challenging to access and the cat was wedged in tight.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you just call the fire department?’” Mayen recalled. “They were just a few blocks away. And then, as I turned around, I saw a fire truck pulling into the parking lot.”

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It’s not often that a cat requires the assistance of firefighters.

“We never know what we’re walking into, but the call for help at a school for an animal rescue, that in and of itself is a little unusual,” said Mike Wicke, the driver/fire equipment operator of Ladder Company #24 of the St. Paul Fire Department.

The cat could not be coaxed out, Wicke recalls, not even with food and helping hands.

“With the owner’s permission, we loosened the brackets and pulled the muffler down,” Wicke said. “We were able to slide the cat out backwards.”

(The firefighters put the muffler back in place afterward.)

Injured

Donna Bachtold plays with Harding, a rescued cat, at Parkview Cat Clinic in Inver Grove Heights on June 12, 2024. (Devanie Andre / Pioneer Press)

The nature of the cat’s most severe injuries were not immediately clear to the first responders.

“We knew the cat was in distress, but we didn’t know the extent of it,” Wicke recalled. “After we got him out, the cat seemed fine; he didn’t flee. We turned him over to animal control and that was the last we heard about it.”

The cat was determined to be a young male; he did not have a microchip and he was not neutered. As time passed, more about his condition emerged.

“The cat was initially believed to be uninjured, but over the next day or so we observed skin sloughing off, consistent with deep burns,” said Molly Lunaris of St. Paul Animal Control in a statement emailed to the Pioneer Press. “The cat was transferred to our rescue partner, Pet Haven, for ongoing care.”

It wasn’t unusual for animal control to reach out to Pet Haven. Based in St. Paul, it was founded in 1952 and is described as the oldest foster-based rescue in Minnesota.

“We are an organization that often leans in when others don’t,” D’Amato said. “We will take the behavior cases, we will take the medical cases.”

When D’Amato got the call, she in turn reached out to Dr. Grant Gugisberg of Parkview Cat Clinic in Inver Grove Heights.

“I said, ‘Can you help?’ and he said, ‘How quick can you get here?’” D’Amato said.

“She brought the cat over that afternoon and we assessed and set up a plan,” Gugisberg said.

Thus began an intervention and partnership to heal one cat that continues even now, almost three months later.

Recovery

Donna Bachtold plays with Harding, a rescued cat, at Parkview Cat Clinic in Inver Grove Heights on June 12, 2024. (Devanie Andre / Pioneer Press)

On a recent afternoon in June, Harding the cat roamed freely around an exam room at Parkview Cat Clinic.

Although expected to make a full recovery, the cat still wears a special recovery suit — it resembles an infant’s “onesie” — to protect his healing skin. He is also missing his left rear leg, which had to be amputated because of his muffler-related injuries.

They say that medicine is both an art and a science; the customized approach to this cat’s treatment plan was crafted along the way, including ideas shaped from Gugisberg’s discussions with other vets in a private Facebook group and the use of fluorescent light therapy via Phovia Light from Vetoquinol USA.

It’s not easy being the patient, though, especially if you are a cat.

Still, for a cat who has endured medical care that includes major surgery, daily wound care and more, his relative ease at the veterinarian’s office was remarkable during this visit. Cats who come to the vet for annual checkups seem more stressed than Harding did as he batted at a toy feather or played with his favorite item, a pink Easter egg.

“Throughout this, he has been a trouper from day one,” Gugisberg said. “This cat absolutely has an amazing ability to remain calm when we do procedures. He’s been a phenomenal patient, which is part of his success.”

Harding gets plenty of love as well as medical care; his foster parent is Donna Bachtold, a veterinary technician who also serves as the clinic’s hospital manager. Her 23-year-old daughter, Issy Rardin, has become Harding’s favorite person; he squished his face into Rardin’s arm as she held him in the exam room.

On this day, there were no procedures: The cat was back at the clinic for a photo shoot in this exam room, which is a significant place.

“This is where we first met,” Bachtold said.

She says she thinks she knows why Harding doesn’t act too stressed here, not even on that first day when he was in so much pain.

“I think he knew he was safe and that someone was going to help him,” Bachtold said.

He may have also found his forever home through this clinic, too: Bachtold’s daughter hopes to adopt Harding.

Even though school’s out for the summer, the good news about Harding has reached Harding.

“We’re so glad this cat’s story has a happy ending and that Harding High School could be part of his rescue, and now, his future,” said Tony Chlebecek, principal of Harding Senior High School, in an emailed statement to the Pioneer Press.

Donations

It’s not cheap to save a cat’s life, even when you factor in the significant donation of care provided by Parkview. Harding, of course, is not Pet Haven’s only charge.

“We just brought in a puppy that was left at the door of Blue Pearl that had ingested meth,” D’Amato said. “She was found, unconscious and whimpering, crying out in pain.”

Recently, though, the nonprofit had to put a hold on most new intakes for financial reasons. Now, thanks to the success of a recent call for donations, Pet Haven’s intake will open again to more animals on Monday.

Donations in Harding’s name can continue to be given to the Phoenix Fund, which helps Pet Haven cover the care of cats and dogs with special needs. Info/donate at pethavenmn.org or via mail at Pet Haven Inc. of MN, P.O. Box 19105; Minneapolis, MN 55419.

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