We never meant to get a second cat. Hell! I don’t even think that we meant to get the first one for that matter. Two wonderful, happy accidents, I suppose. Needle was the easy one. A friend found a litter of kittens in the woods by her Mom’s house. I took one as soon as he was able to leave the mother cat. Peach, on the other hand, is the most expensive cat that I have ever owned. And I wouldn’t change that for the world.
We have feral cats all over my neighborhood. People put out food. It’s a thing. We learned the hard way to pound the hood of your car before you start it, because sometimes animals like to sleep in there. It’s warm. Sounds cozy. That is exactly what happened to Peach.
Ben came home from the hardware store to a tiny kitten hissing at him from where he parks his car. She was struggling to pull herself into hiding under the neighbors’ bush, but we scruffed her and threw her into a box with a red kitchen towel. (Shout out to whoever bought us those as a wedding gift. We are down to three now.) We didn’t quite realize the dilemma we were in until we pulled up to the local animal hospital only to realize from the polite sign posted on the front door that it was Labor Day. They were closed. Well shit.
Google sent us to a second veterinarian hospital that was also closed, but third time was the charm. The next destination on our journey landed us into an entire other conversation: do we keep her? I mean, we obviously kept her.
Purr Machine
I had a stuffed cat when I was little that would mimic the sounds of a cat purring. I wonder what happened to that cat? It’s probably in my mom’s attic somewhere. When they brought Peach back out to us, all cleaned and drugged out of her gourd, she was purring so loud. That was it. Here is my credit card.
She had a broken leg that need to be fixed or amputated. We decided to have the emergency vet just get her stable, so we could then take her to our personal vet the next day. It was cheaper that way, and we didn’t exactly have busted kitten on our bingo card that year. We did have to spend the rest of our Labor Day setting up a kitten triage in our office to keep her away from Needle while she was healing.
Our vet was very honest about the fact that he was not qualified for this type of surgery. He mostly deals with fat housecats, not ones that got torn up in an engine. He sent us to another vet, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in this sort of thing. I didn’t even know this type of person existed to be honest. But grateful, I am.
He inserted a tiny pin into her shoulder, which ended up getting removed a few weeks later. Her tail had also been damaged. We tried to just snip the end off to save it, but that didn’t exactly work out as planned. In the end we had to have the majority of her tail removed, and we are left with what we lovingly refer to as her antenna. It always goes off when she is happy.
She does have her crazy side, and she is super fucking annoying in the morning when she wants to be fed. And when I say wants to be fed, I mean she wants all of us to get up and start our day so that she can go take a nap in the window. Maybe I should just start opening that one blind and then going back to bed?
The Virus
Not that one. Giardia. Maybe she was born with it…Yes, she pretty much was. The rest of her litter mates followed Iris across that rainbow bridge very early on. I suspect Peach would have fallen to that same fate had it not been for out happy little accident. (I married an artist. Of course there is a Bob Ross reference.) It’s an intestinal thing, so let’s just say the litter box got cleaned numerous times a day, if you know what I mean.
We gave her the medicine that the vet gave us, metro-blah-blah-something, which was supposed to clear that right up. What we didn’t know was that Needle has also contracted Giardia. We tried to keep them out of each other’s litter boxes, but that is a nearly impossible feat. We had no clue, because he was asymptomatic. He was however continuing to re-infect Peach with it every time we took her off the drugs. Now the whole family is going to the doctor, and everyone is on medication.
I just went ahead and bought a new litter box. Screw trying to bleach out that mess. Side note: Needle is a big cat, and those standard litter boxes are too small for him, and stupid expensive. Find yourself a restaurant friend, and go buy a less-than-$5 buss tub. It works just fine.
8 Lives to Go
This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite cartoons, Garfield: His Nine Lives. I also own the book, because Duh! this is a classic. I am almost scared to know what her next lives are going to entail. If I use my pocket knife to open a box, she runs directly at it. No fear.
I wish I had that attitude sometimes, that courage. Cats want something and they pounce on it. I tend to overanalyze every situation until the chance just slips away. It’s really starting to not work for me. The anxious quest for perfection is all the more obviously becoming a mirage, a figment of my imagination. It’s what our culture demands of us. That’s the fake news. Too soon?
I have lived with many Zen masters, all of them cats.
Eckhart Tolle
I am not perfect. In fact I have made an ass out of myself more times than I can count. I have made a bajillion mistakes, and will continue to do so. The difficult part is getting the mom from Carrie out of my head, “They’re all going to laugh at you.” Yep. They sure do. I am an absolute idiot sometimes. I am trying to learn how to just laugh at myself. Please tell me I am not the only who feels this way.
Mad love, Jenna
