Tea and Dragons

Up until a few weeks ago, my mother had a cat.  

The Shadow was informally adopted from a family whose dogs were a bit too much for an elderly declawed* feline.  She adapted without visible upset to my parents’ house and habits, and spent the next few years sitting on boxes, demanding food early in the morning, and occasionally hitting Mom up for pets.  

She wasn’t the cat my mother wanted, being independent and rarely cuddly, but she would sometimes sleep on Mom’s hip at night, and quickly learned that the physical therapy exercises that required lying down put Mom’s hand at the perfect height for scritches.  

Recently The Shadow’s thyroid issues got worse, and my mother had to let her go.  Apparently she passed peacefully, without fear.  

We don’t really know her history; she was already at least eleven years old when Mom adopted her.  She was quite content, but never seemed to bond with my mother, simply accepting everything as her due.  

Which is why it’s a little surprising that she’s still around.  

I haven’t spotted her yet myself, but Mom sees her pass by on occasion, on some ghost-feline business intent.  Why her, out of the six cats that have dwelt there over the decades,** we do not know.  But, y’know, she’s welcome.  

I’m just waiting for my dad to notice her.  *evil grin* 

*She came that way.  We would never.  

**My money would have been on Secondhand Rose, who ruled the house with an iron paw, but oh well. 

Warning: animal injury, mention of animal death

My apartment complex has a number of feral cats, mostly fixed at this point.  I feed a few of them every night, and extras on occasion.  It’s a big complex, and there are several territories.  One of the maintenance employees feeds many of the others.  

One of his regulars, a small tortoiseshell, would stop by my location every few months at suppertime and yell for her share, but she didn’t come my way often and so I almost never saw her.  She wasn’t shy, but she wasn’t touchable in any way; born feral, and aggressive when cornered.  

Some time this summer she received a hideous injury to her face.  As in, there probably wasn’t an eye left, but it was impossible to tell by looking.  Maintenance Guy had managed to trap her for spaying earlier, but when she got hurt he tried and tried and she wouldn’t go near the trap.  I’d seen her once since, but I couldn’t get near her.  

Last night, she turned up.  Her injury was scabbed over but obviously infected; she was terribly thin, mewing quietly.  I offered food and water, but she wouldn’t take either; I don’t think she could smell them.  I went to sit down where I usually do so everyone could eat in peace.  

She followed me.  She followed me, this untouchable cat, sat down a couple of feet away, and cried at me.  Little mostly silent mews, remaining eye focused on me with determination.  

Help me.  Help me.  Fix it.  

It’s not often that a problem comes with that many flashing arrows pointing at it.  There was no way to talk myself out of the knowledge that I was her solution.  And God (I will say, because that is my faith), having handed me the problem, made sure I could solve it.  

1. I called the county’s Animal Control number.  A live person answered, even though it was almost 11PM.  

2. I got her into the cat carrier (fur and bones, I could feel every rib and vertebra) with no injury to either of us.  

3. Animal Control sent someone to pick her up, here at the very edge of the county, a forty-minute drive one-way at the best of times, and long past dark.  On a weekend.  

I’m certain she was euthanized as soon as she got to the facility.  Even if she weren’t feral, that injury was fearsome, and this is a poor county with limited resources.  But she’s no longer in pain, no longer starving.  

Yet I can’t get over her asking for help.  She didn’t trust humans, she only wanted food, she wouldn’t let anyone closer than a few feet.  

Until last night.  

What made her so certain I could help?  What made her demand it of me?  Weakness might have made her catchable, but she didn’t cringe or flinch, or even struggle until I got her to the door of the carrier.  She even let me pet her a little, tail going up as I stroked my hand down her spine.  

How did she know? 

I have spent most of the day passed out in bed with either a cold or the flu; at least one of my kittens is a mouser, but would rather play with her food; and both my kitchen sink and the ceiling over my toilet seem to be leaking slowly.

It's not so much that I want a do-over as I'd like a little moderation.

Thanks for all the good wishes cat-wards; Henrietta's doing quite well!

She still has to wear the cone for now, at least when I'm not around, so that is most of the time; but she's greeted me at the door the last two days and she's eating steadily.  She already looks larger, somehow.

She goes back to the vet on Friday to have the drain removed.  I'm guessing she'll have to wear the cone longer, since the wound on her right hip is still wide open, but it'll be nice to have the drain gone, it's really gross.  :P


( Click for photos (none yucky) )

As some of you know, I feed feral cats. 

Recently, I've been coaxing the boldest of the kittens (a lovely calico) to come close.  We've got to the finger-sniffing stage; I can touch her when she's eating if she's not looking, but she'll dash off and then come back to the food.  Progress with this kind is always slow. 

A few nights ago, in the dark and rain, I saw a half-grown cat that I thought was one of the four regular kittens; it took me several minutes to realize it was tabby-striped instead of black-and-white, and I was absolutely startled to be able to touch it.  It was literally starving; fur stretched over bone. 

Last night, it appeared out of the night and screamed frantically at me until I put food down, even stropping my legs a few times--hardly feral behavior.  It growled vaguely as it ate, but I figured it was just protecting the food.  I stroked a hand down its back; it had some kind of injury on one flank. 

Tonight, on impulse, I brought out the carrier, figuring that I could possibly put the first can in there and so lure it in.  It didn't quite work that way, but in the end I bundled it in and brought it inside. 

It--she, I got a look at the back end finally--is indeed starving.  Half-grown, long tail, a handsome tabby coat, and fortunately not nursing.  She's got wounds on both flanks and it looks like something tried to rip her throat out. 

And she's not only merely cautious--I let her out of the bathroom within the first ten minutes--and talkative, she's definitely domesticated, as she was just trying to imitate a purring fur tippet around my neck and chest. 

She's shedding in clumps, she's got itchy ears and open sores, she may be running a fever, and she smells bad.  And she's curled up next to me on the couch giving herself a bath after fifteen minutes of as close a cuddle as I would allow, and purring some more.  I'll see if there's an open vet tomorrow and pray she's microchipped, though in this neighborhood she was more likely dumped or simply lost. 

We're going with "Henrietta" for the moment. 

Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

phdelicious kindly provided the following:

Dreams--I enjoy them, as long as they're reasonably pleasant.  I have recurring landscapes in my head, including an entire mall that I revisit from time to time, and my sleeping brain also has an obsession with elevators (they rarely move in just one dimension) and, of all things, parking garages (no idea).  I have obsessive dreams about trying to get to a store to buy scones and clotted cream.  And nearly all my dreams have crowds of people I don't know.  

Writing--What I do for fun, as anyone who's reading this should know.  :P  One of my two-point-five talents.†  Actually, it's not writing in the strictest sense most of the time; it's typing.  My handwriting is awful; I deliberately cultivated sloppy writing as a child, in a reaction to my peers dotting all their "i"s with hearts, but even now writing clearly requires effort and my mother theorizes that I have a learning disability.☎  

Pets--The stuff of life.  I can't imagine growing up without them!  Five cats, two dogs, three rats, five guinea pigs, a gerbil, a turtle, and countless fish.  Never let your father name the gerbil--Alphonse, really?  And sometimes the nicknames are more fun than the formal ones--there was Squippy, Jack the Nipper☂, the Fluffbomb, the Calorie Pointer, Rupert, the dog we named after my great-aunt--and mustn't forget Mom's previous cat, whose given name was Saufie.  It stood for Smart Ass Under Foot.  Which she most definitely was. 

Fairytales--Practically infinite resources for the imaginative.  Even the most familiar and worn-out of tales can be refreshed into something new--take the concept and run with it, invert it, flip it inside out and dance with it.  Check out those from other cultures, and see what's the same and what's different.  Confound expectations.  Play.☛ 

Monuments--I am rarely impressed by them.  I saw Mount Rushmore and wondered why anyone had spent time on that. 

Vacation--I keep thinking about taking a week off to get stuff done, and then realising✈ that I'd probably just sit around and amuse myself on the computer, and get nothing accomplished... 

Laughter--To be expected, when my family gets together.  We love to laugh.  Sit us down to eat, and the puns start flying; leave us there long enough, and we begin uniting efforts to make my mother crack up (by no means an easy task).  This can be somewhat daunting to guests.  As jeanniemac stated long ago, "Dinner at the [name redacted] cannot be described; it can only be experienced."§ 


†Reading, and I throw a decent pot with some practice. 

☎I really predate the focus on learning disabilities.  I'm not at all convinced she's right, and if I do it's quite minor, but it's true that I can't do much of anything that requires fine motor control in the fingers. 

☂Almost.  

☛The recent upsurge in fairytale TV amuses me, and I admit to being a fan of OUAT, but that ain't exactly quality stuff.  Try Castle Waiting (thank you cincoflex!) and Robin McKinley if you want the good crack.  Or even Charles deLint, though his quality wobbles all over the place. 

✈Still stuck between American English and British English.  Sigh. 

§We hand out magnets if they don't run screaming.  

The spot where I feed ferals is just outside one of my bedroom windows.  In an effort to amuse my indoor felines, I set up a birdfeeder--currently a long shallow dish--on the window ledge so the (mostly) sparrows will come and be interesting just on the other side of the panes. 

Below the window is a bricked-in opening at ground level, with a cement sill where I put the ferals' water dish.  It has one of those sheet-metal protectors sunk into the ground, a half-circle that's actually below the sill.  Within the protector, not much grows; a few blades of grass, some low weeds maybe, a twisted root that's probably left over from something else. 

I admit I'm not tidy in filling the feeder--it's above my head--and the birds certainly aren't tidy in their eating.  Which could explain why I'm suddenly growing sunflowers.  What astonishes me is not only their rapid and considerable growth in a period in which there has been almost no rain, but the almost simultaneous arrival of bugs to eat the plants, judging from the holes in the leaves, and a strangling ivy of some kind to wind up the sunflower stems. 

None of this appears to have slowed the sunflowers down any. 

They're nice to look at, and they make a good screen in front of the water dish.  And it's easy to toss the old water their way when I rinse out the bowl.  I suppose the maintenance people will take 'em out with a weedwhacker eventually, but in the meantime-- 

--Sunflowers! 

My cat has gas.  This has enlivened my life...

Friends having rough times, work trying to make me cry, parental units refusing to recognize a legitimate "no".  *sigh*  I hate being stressed, and I hate worse that other people are more stressed.  I want a backrub and a day's worth of naps, and maybe a swim in a nice empty pool while I'm at it. 

On the other hand, Silver seems to have recovered from her respiratory infection, which frankly I didn't think was going to happen.  So that's something.