A simple hack to get no more memcache timeouts in production.
You should add some kind of error notification above the ‘nil’ line, to know that memcache is no longer behaving properly.
(If it does not work, check if MemCache.new.cache_get_with_timeout_protection is defined -> load the hack in after_initialize)

code

class MemCache
  def cache_get_with_timeout_protection(*args)
    begin
      cache_get_without_timeout_protection(*args)
    rescue MemCache::MemCacheError => e
      if e.to_s == 'IO timeout' and (Rails.env.production? or Rails.env.staging?)
        nil
      else
        raise e
      end
    end
  end
  alias_method_chain :cache_get, :timeout_protection
end

try it

start script/console
kill -s STOP memcache-pid
try reading from cache in console
kill -s CONT memcache-pid