The skydiving cat
This video sort of freaked me out. The cat, strapped to his owner, looks calm until he is nearly out of the airplane. At the edge, he starts flailing in his jumpsuit and booties. The owner jumps and then the video ends!
Does the cat survive?
He wasn't even wearing goggles. I was very distressed.
I found an article, but I don't read Russian. Fortunately, one desk away from me sits editor John-Thor Dahlburg, who is pretty much the master of multiple languages. So I begged him, a former reporter who once worked in Afghanistan covering the Taliban resistance to the Soviets, to interpret this puff piece on a sky-diving kitty.
The good news is that the cat survived the sky dive. His name is Malysh. The 60-year-old owner is Vladimir Kulikov, a retiree from a town near Moscow. Apparently, Kulikov has been preparing for the co-jump for five years. He even sewed together a custom-suit for his cat. They jumped from 1,200 meters and the cat made no noise and showed no sign of fear. Upon landing, Malysh was presented a certificate for the jump.
Kulikov is working on creating a special parachute so Malysh can jump solo in the future.
DAN SCAPUSIO joined the Sun Sentinel's online team in 2008. A self described Internet enthusiast, he says the World Wide Web brings him joy, sadness, excitement, joy and a deep sense of terror all at once. For him, it's a crossroads where college humor and the most valuable scholarly information can be found and, in some cases, even melded.
