Well, we have now confirmed that hawks cannot really carry 15-pound cats: this week, a hawk swooped down and snatched a chubby white kitty on the Upper West Side, leaving his owner frantically scrambling to find him...only to discover that the hawk had almost immediately dropped the cat a few doors down the block.
The News spoke to the unnamed owner of Eddie, the plump cat who was targeted by a red-tailed hawk earlier this week. The owner became aware of the abduction when she heard the "raspy kreeing of a red-tailed hawk capturing its prey" mixed with the cat's sad mews, and found evidence of the attack. The owner looked all over the neighborhood, and started putting up fliers, which gained their own attention by the Times for their blunt wording: “The sign said something like, ‘If you find the cat’s body, please give us a call’...I thought it was very odd, but it’s New York,” said Cathy Konciak.
But after seeing the fliers, a neighbor recognized Eddie, and let the owner know the hawk had dropped him in the garden of a building a few doors down, barely 50 feet away. Eddie, who was no worse for wear, must have fallen at least five floors: "I can only imagine Eddie bounced off the umbrella like in the cartoons," the owner said. She summed up the situation succinctly: "The moral of the story is essentially: Your flaws can be an asset. In Eddie's case, his chubbiness saved him." And now, we shall spend the rest of the day looking up photos of curvy cats.
