The Cat That Can Open Locks - The Sh*t that I Wake Up To

So I awoke at 5:30 this morning and I wanted to get more sleep. I fed my cats so they wouldn't wake me up to be fed.  My one dumb*ss cat (that's is his official nickname now) gets fed in a cage, otherwise he will eat the other cats' food. He as figured out how to open the cage,  so I now have to put a clasp on it which he then figured out how to open that (don't ask how).  So I now have to block the cage door with the heavy cat food can.  Well, he found out this morning the hard way, that this is not always a good idea.

The cat that can open locks.  This cat can open that lock from the inside and get out when he wants to.  Except for one particular morning...

To his misfortune, I figured out how he can open the clasp.

I go to let him out this morning before going back to sleep and he is hanging there on the side of the cage upside down yowling with his paw stuck in the latch device. He had attempted to put his claw in the clasp hinge to open it and it got stuck in there on the outside of the can.  How?  Why?  These are questions that are too much to answer that early in the morning.

 So there is this cat hanging there yowling in pain with it's paw stuck through the cage.  Every time  tried to touch his paw or turn the clasp down to free his paw, he would scream in pain and try to claw me with his other front paw.  If I tried reaching through the cage to hold him still so I could work on it, he would try to bite me!  What a predicament!

So about the time I'm thinking "Ok, how the hell am I going to get him out of this mess", the other cats had come along and decided to join in on the fun...   Oh joy.  Since he was in fighting mode because he was in pain, the other cats took this as a challenge and began to try and fight him through the cage.  This caused him to move around more which caused him to pull his claw even more which caused him to thrash and scream even more.  WTF? 

Fortunately, in his twisting to try and get at the other cats with his hind feet he put his back to the cage door and I tried to grab him by the scruff of the neck to hold him still.  While I only succeeded for a brief second, this freaked him out and he totally spazzed and twisted and yowled trying to get away.  While in the process of doing this, his claw came free of the lock.  Tell me that wasn't a relief.  Because my next step after removing the other cats was to cut his claw off.  I'm sure he would have enjoyed that immensely.

Stupid cats.