One Of The Office's Best And Most Chaotic Episodes Required A $12,000 Fake Cat

By the time the fifth season of "The Office" came around, the NBC comedy series was already an award-winning hit. The show had a huge fanbase, averaged around nine million viewers with each new episode, and it had previously won Emmys for Best Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Steve Carell, and a variety of wins and nominations for writing, directing, and various supporting performances from the rest of the cast. But season 5 would bring a new challenge when the show was given a prime time slot following Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, bringing millions of new eyes to the series.

As longtime producer Halsted Sullivan recalled in Andy Greene's book "The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s," the pressure was on to make the show appealing to both dedicated fans and new viewers who had never seen the series before:

"We were tasked with making it a stand-alone episode, but making it something that fans who have been along for the ride all five seasons could enjoy, but also people who tuned in to the show for the first time would be able to enjoy. It was very important. We were given a lot of mandates and they didn't even come from NBC. They came from [creator] Greg [Daniels]. He was like, "Look, this is our opportunity to sort of re-pilot the show and introduce a whole new group of people to 'The Office.' It's very important to have a really grabby opening."

The episode in question, titled "Stress Relief," became one of the best episodes in the entire series – a super-sized 42-minute romp that delivered one of the most chaotic and hilarious cold opens in the show's history, guaranteeing that it was "grabby." The episode also required the use of several real CPR dummies, a trained stunt cat, and a realistic fake cat that cost no less than $12,000.

In "Stress Relief," Dunder Mifflin's oddball, troublesome employee Dwight (Rainn Wilson) creates havoc when he stages a fire drill without letting the rest of the office know that he's created a faux emergency. The result is total panic in the office, causing chaos and damage to company property. But perhaps the worst result is that fellow worker Stanley Hudson (Leslie David Baker) suffers a heart attack in the ensuing panic. This prompts manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell) to host a series of emergency training and stress relief meetings in the office in order to help Stanley stay calm, but they only end up making him more stressed out.

In one of the meetings, a medical professional is brought in to teach the office how to administer CPR to someone experiencing health problems. Of course, Michael's ignorance and Dwight's eccentricities result in the lesson being totally derailed. It comes to a head with Dwight cutting open the CPR dummy to harvest organs for donations, and it goes totally off the rails when he cuts the face off the dummy and wears it for a "Silence of the Lambs" reference.

Dwight ends up getting in trouble for destroying the dummy, with Dunder Mifflin CEO David Wallace complaining that the dummy cost the company $3,500 to replace. However, that was a little exaggerated when compared to the true cost of the dummy. As line producer Randy Cordray revealed in an episode of "The Office Ladies" podcast, those dummies cost around $1,000 at the time, but they used one that cost $750 each. Even though production used three of those dummies for "Stress Relief," that cost was nothing compared to the fake cat needed for the fire drill opening.

Going back to that hilarious, wild cold open in "Stress Relief," creator Greg Daniels wanted this scene to  be "big and crazy and wild," according to series writer Anthony Farrell (via "The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s"). Even after Farrell and some of the other writers had started working on the opening, Daniels wanted it to be "bigger and crazier," which is how we ended up with the moment where Angela tries to have Oscar save her secret office cat Bandit by tossing the feline up to him in the ceiling's air ducts. Unfortunately, Oscar doesn't catch the cat, and the poor guy ends up falling back out of the ceiling and crashing down on the desk. 

To pull this off, episode director Jeff Blitz revealed in Greene's book that they briefly tried to figure out how to use two trained stunt cats to make the scene look realistic, instead of just tossing around a stuffed cat. One cat would be tossed up into the ceiling and another would be thrown down from the ceiling after Oscar fails to catch Bandit. But this set-up would have limited how many times they could attempt the stunt. As Blitz explained:

"The trainer had said that she was comfortable with us only doing it like two or three times. Greg wanted to know why that was and she was like, 'Well, because the cat gets scared of doing stunt work and can't do this kind of work anymore, and then it will need to be retired.' Then Greg wanted to know what the lifetime income of a cat like that might be so that if they wanted to do more takes they [would just buy it out forever.When Greg floated it, Randy was like, 'No way, can't do that.'"

That's when the second approach went into action.

As Angela Kinsey explained on "The Office Ladies" podcast, she would toss a fake cat up into the ceiling, and an animal trainer hidden in the ceiling would drop a trained stunt cat onto Angela's desk on set. Apparently throwing a cat around is more traumatizing than just dropping it a few feet. Kinsey elaborated:

"Randy even went to extra measures to make sure the cat would be fine when they were going to drop it on my desk. He and the animal trainers and our stunt guy, Eric Sulke, they came up with this huge inflatable safety airbag that would decelerate and gently catch the falling cat. It was described as like falling into feathers. And we did some practice runs and the trainer signed off on it. It was fine. The cat wasn't traumatized at all. They hid this airbag in the corner of my accounting desk with like papers and stuff. But there was a cat airbag on my desk, OK? And the ceiling panel had breakaway foam rubber. All right. So it was all very cushy, cushy"

However, having a fake cat that matched the real cat used for the stunt was quite the pricey endeavor. As Cordray explained in Greene's book, "We had to build a stuffed animal to match Bandit. It was about $12,000 because seamstresses have to match the coat of the cat, they have to meticulously paint furry fabric and create the exact shape and size of Bandit."

Though the cat was intended to be caught in the ceiling so the stunt cat could take over, there was a mistake on set.

First of all, Kinsey sad the fake cat that she had to toss into the ceiling was particularly creepy. She recalled:

"I want you to know that thing was one of the scariest things I've ever seen, held or touched. First of all, it had these yellow eyes that would just look at you and then the fur felt real. But when you picked it up, it was gelatinous. So it went flop like as you held it. Like, imagine like flopping a towel over your arm, a big thick towel. It was, like, smushy. It was frightening. We started kind of pranking with it, like I set it on Oscar's desk and he walked up and he was like, oh God, I had to start covering its face with a piece of paper because the thing was so creepy to look at."

But Kinsey had another strange memory from this sequence, where she remembered two cats somehow crashing down from the ceiling when only one was supposed to fall. Kinsey got the explanation from Jeff Blitz on "The Office Ladies" podcast:

"I talked to Jeff Blitz and he goes, 'Yes, Angela. Two cats came down.' I was like, 'What?' He said on the take we used, the trainer that was supposed to catch the fake cat missed. And so then on action, fake cat came out the other side and real cat. Two cats. Two cats hit the desk and Jeff said luckily, the way the camera was positioned, it only caught one cat. And I think it's the real cat when you watch."

One of the funniest moments on "The Office," and all it took was $12,000 and a debate over how much production could afford to pay stunt cats. At least it wasn't as bad as the $60,000 needed for music rights due to an improvised joke in "Benihana Christmas."