Old Tom Back on Prowl After 4 Days in Pipe

A stray cat, whose plaintive mewing while trapped for four days in a drainpipe on the face of a 100-foot cliff in Dana Point caught the ears of nearby residents, was freed early Tuesday by an Orange County work crew.

Workers had to scale down the cliff and unbolt a section of the 12-inch pipe to free it, said Bill Reiter of the county’s Environmental Management Agency.

“That yellow-white, bob-tailed old tom came out of there like a bat out of hell,” Reiter said. “He seemed to be in good shape, except a little wet from the rainwater that ran down in the pipe.”

Reiter said the pipe, which drains a gutter in Street of the Green Lantern overlooking Dana Point Harbor, drops almost straight down the cliff for 15 or 20 feet, then bends horizontally a few feet before plunging downward again.

The cat--obviously a stray, said Reiter--had become trapped in the horizontal section of the pipe.

“My guys just crawled down the bluff, unbolted one end of the horizontal piece, and out he came.”

Residents, who first heard the cat Friday and had been dropping food down the pipe, reported it to sheriff’s deputies.

Thanks to their concern, the tomcat survived to prowl the streets, if not the cliff, another day.