WATERLOO, Iowa --- Taz spent the day Friday jabbing his oversized paws at a dangling toy and playfully gnawing on a visitor's finger.
Several weeks ago the fortunate feline survived an amazing dance with death -- dodging heavy machinery, whirling blades and a crushing hydraulic compactor at a Waterloo recycling center.
"It's a miracle he survived," said Gene Dettmer, who retraced the days-old kitten's cliffhanger journey during a visit to Cedar Valley Recycling's sorting line. "It's just miraculous that he made it considering everything he had to go through."
Also marveling at the kitten's good luck is Dan Reynolds, supervisor at Cedar Valley Recycling, who believes Taz arrived on a truck of recyclables.
"Garbage trucks compact things, and it survived that," he said. "Then it survived a skid loader," avoiding being run over on the floor or crushed by the loader's claws, which deposited it onto some 50 feet of conveyor belt.
The kitten was so young its eyes had yet to open or he would have seen the bunch of blades used to separate out dirt and paper from recyclables. Bouncing along the main sorting line, he rolled over several steel rollers before an alert employee rescued Taz just a whisker away from certain death.
"It was just a little fluff ball, and she reached out and picked it up," Dettmer said. "If she wouldn't have grabbed it, another 2 feet and it would have fallen 20 feet into a compactor."
Reynolds said it's not unusual for animals to show up in recyclables.
"We get animals, wanted or not, quite a bit," he said. "But for the cat to make it all the way where it did, that's never happened. I'm glad it survived."
The employee who rescued the kitten fed it with a bottle, while her dog "mothered" the pet until she could no longer keep it. That's when Dettmer, decided he could find a home for the kitten with his brother, Dennis.
"I was intrigued by the story," Dettmer said. "And I knew (Dennis) wouldn't say no once he saw it."
Dennis Dettmer adopted the kitten last week, gave it a name and has taken to his new pet, which comes with an incredible story and a unique appearance.
Taz is a polydactyl cat, with two extra toes on each of his front paws and an extra toe each on the back paws. Mitten kittens, as they are often called, are the product of a genetic mutation and are more commonly found on the East Coast.
Neither Reynolds nor the Dettmers believe the kitten was discarded. Most likely, its mother had a litter in a recycling bin or in pile of recyclables.
Gene Dettmer took Taz to a veterinarian last week, where he got a relatively clean bill of health.
"He said it was in excellent shape considering what it had been through," he said.
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