Cat Who Threw Apple Core In Toilet Nearly Drowns In Deluge

Lynnwood, WA

A local cat today told how he watched his three best friends being nearly swept to their deaths after a flash flood emanated from a toilet he had clogged up with an apple core.

Meatball, a 4-year-old, neutered, Domestic Short Hair, scrambled off the seat of a brown leather sofa as it was carried away by a surge of water from the upstairs toilet.

Meatball said he had been upstairs using the bathroom, feeling cocky and not wanting to smell up the bathroom garbage can, he said he just "flung" the apple core into the toilet.


An apple core lodged in the plumbing caused the violent flooding

Duncan, Frankie, and Lukas, all 3-year-old, neutered, Domestic Short Hair brothers, were swept away in the deluge as they sat in the living room. The friends were gathered together watching ’Desperate Housewives’ when a drip they had reportedly heard earlier suddenly became a “huge tsunami-like wave” and suddenly burst into an two-mile-wide river.

Within a few minutes, the water pouring over the top of the toilet was so high it had washed through the house and over a small bridge on the road to Meatball’s home. Cars that had been parked nearby had been lifted by the tsunami-like waves and carried down the street

“Whole trees went by us,” said Duncan, who was found three hours later some 67 feet up in a fir tree clutching an apple fritter and shaking. “It was terrifying.”


The three brothers are now resting dry and comfortably

"I think the sofa rolled over a few times with the force of the toilet water before it finally smashed through the front wall of the house,” said Duncan. “I was clutching the sofa cushions, but finally was thrown off.”

"I saw Lukas holding onto the drapes as I was pushed out by the water,” said Meatball. “He was saying, ‘oh, shit.’ I heard Duncan laughing and Lukas yelling.

Meatball, described by relatives as shy and responsible, was reportedly in a hurry when he decided to just “toss the apple in.” It appears he simply misjudged the capacity of the plumbing, which had never failed him before.


The clogged toilet eventually flooded the entire Lynnwood area

All 4 cats are being treated for minor injuries at Stevens Hospital and are expected to be released without incident.

Amid the threat of worse flooding and fast-moving water in many parts of the neighborhood, Lynnwood Police warned cats to stay away from the now toilet-flooded sections and any areas where water is being diverted by culverts and drainage ditches.

During Lynnwood's "Flood of the Century" in 1985, Ramona the Pest, a 7-year-old, spayed, Tortoise Shell was killed when she was overtaken by water flowing from a wild, unchecked drinking fountain.

Sharyn Thoma-Guay reporter-at-large