I rescued a cat. I feel terrible.

I had a doctors appointment today (1 year post-op!), which means I worked from home and walked. On my way home, I noticed a little lump of fur in the leaves by the side walk. It hissed at me, and then meowed pathetically. And when I looked at it straight on, it hissed, and then meowed again. Heart breaking meows, like I am so sorry for that hiss, but I dont feel good right now and I am scared, and I am cold, and I am alone...

Well, I couldn't unsee that, I couldn't unhear that, and I couldn't walk away. I have no idea what to do though. I am on the side of a busy street, with no other pedestrians. This cat doesn't have a collar, and might be mean. I pull out my phone, and look for cat rescue, which leads me to animal control, who tell me to take the cat to a vet clinic. I call the vet clinic (because really? You can just leave stray, injured animals there?), and they say, well, actually, take it to the animal hospital. If the cat looks injured (and this one seems not right about the back legs), its going to need care all night, and we go home. A guy came by to check on the cat, and said it had been there since 6am. He also didn't know what to do. But now I have been talking to the cat, and it let me pet its head a bit.

I am going to help this cat.

I go back to the doctors office and get a box with a lid. I take my sweater off and put my coat back on. The cat is shivering, and it doesn't mind when I throw a sweater on it. I figure I can cover the sharp bits with the sweater to move it into the box and slam the lid on. But the cat doesn't fuss at all when I pick it up. It also cant move its hind legs when I get it in the box. Its legs are sticking out so I cant get the lid shut.

I just have to get the cat to the hospital.

I am talking to the cat the whole way home. Its ok. You are having a bad day. Almost there. You are so brave. Good kitty. Its ok, buddy. ... And the cat is talking back. That same, lonely, scared meow. The hospital is close, and they gladly spring to action. Lets get him into a room, and have a look, they say.

Now the cat is warm and alert. And friendly. He nuzzles the microchip scanner the detects nothing. He nuzzles the vet tech as she pulls him onto a clean towel. He looks for a new hand to nuzzle as the vet tech pinches those back legs to see if he feels anything. Nothing. She says he has no circulation back there. She takes him back to see a doctor, and they tell me Thanks for bringing him in.

I am going to hold my cat and cry now.

I am pretty sure they are going to put that cat down. They probably already did. Matt says dying by the side of the road would be worse than going to a cat hospital. And that is true, but now I feel like I lost a cat that was mine for a while. I feel like I lied to the cat. I feel like if I could be so moved by a cat, why do I not do more to help with human suffering? I feel like I should not have left the cat to be put down by strangers, when I might have stayed with it. I feel like my rescue backfired. I almost want to call the hospital to see what happened to the cat, but the outcome seems so obvious. For a minute today, I thought I was going to be a hero, but now I just feel heart sick.

He'll have a chapter in my memoir

As frequent readers will know, our little tomcat Raoul has a size XL personality. He likes to shower with us, he likes to eat beans and spicy food, and he chases crumpled balls of paper across the house like a puppy. He's got these handsome stripes and he knows it, and these cute little lynx-like ear tufts. He also is very accustomed to being the master of his domain, for it is written: pity the fly that dare to enter our home, for the great predator will find it and paw at it until it can't fly away anymore. It's written here at least.
What he doesn't have, is a lot of hair. He is actually balding on his little ears. The vet had no clear insight, but gave us a super mix of soothing, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial anti-fungal drops to rub on his bald ears for a few weeks. The drops are kept in the fridge. While he normally isn't keen on having someone mess with his ears, he really loathes having cold slimy drops rubbed on them, but in his oddly passive way. If one of us holds him, he doesn't struggle while the other puts drops on, he just tries to fold that ear away so far it retracts. Inevitably, the few hair left on his ears look even more pitiful, greased together and dark in contrast to his naked ears. The balding doesn't seem to be improving yet- but it also hasn't spread. Perhaps this is some kind of alpha cat pattern baldness, maybe we can try rogaine for felines next. More likely, he will feature in my memoirs as the slightly bald, home-bound comic relief.

Intermission: Update

Right,

So I'm about to get down to the business of blogging about the honeymoon, much like I did for the Japan trip, but I wanted to do a quick update about us before diving back into the past again.

We've been home and married for about two weeks, and we've flipped over from being contract-to-hire employees to actual employees. Our salary...did something, I can't quite remember which direction it went, but our benefits for being properly employed are spectacular. Bonuses and 401k stuff and everything. They even pay for our health club membership. How nice!

Nagano continues to grow. He was a BIG kitten when we came back from Costa Rica, and he continues to grow in tiny little steps. Being older has calmed him down, too. I'd post pictures, but it's a big process to get stuff on here and then posted, so I'll do that later.

Tigger had a rough day yesterday. We took him into the vet a few months ago and the recommended bringing him in for a teeth cleaning. It's a pretty serious thing where they put him under and get at his teeth. In Tigger's case, they actually pulled 6 of his teeth because they were too rotten. We were worried for him, but he seems to be doing just fine. We have some antibiotics and mouth-morphine to give him for a few weeks and days, respectively, and he ate hard food right when he came back, so that's good. He seems to be in pretty high spirits, but that might just be the drugs talking. He was very affectionate, as soon as we picked him up from the vet, we had to reach in and clean out his carrier some, and he was nuzzling Jessie all over when she put her hand in. The vets say that pets seem to really like having bad teeth out, because it hurts less. It certainly seems to have put Tigger in a good mood.

Also, we're going house hunting! We went to a couple of 'open houses of opportunity' last week, and weren't terribly impressed with what we saw. We've seen some better houses, though, and talked with our real estate guy who will be showing us eight of them tomorrow. So that'll be fun. We'll bring the camera, any experienced house-shoppers want to warn us of what to look for?

Video games! Tis the season where all the big stuff comes out in preparation for the holiday shopping season. I'm currently playing Little Big Planet, ahead of schedule, he he, and Rock Band 2 with Jessie. We make a pretty great band together. It's called 'Doomsday Not Included'. We took that one from the 'random band name generator' in the game, which is awesome.

Right, let's talk Costa Rica...

-N

Nagano is Healthy, mostly

We took Nagano to his first Vet visit yesterday. It all went pretty well, overall. He really didn't like being kept inside the carrier, but all he did was meow in an incredibly adorable fashion. We let him out when we got into the exam room but kept him from going too crazy by distracting him with business cards and other things for him to paw at.

He got the normal exam and didn't really like it much, of course, but was a pretty good cat about it for the most part. He tested negative for FEV and Feline Lukemia (yay!) but he does have a little intestinal parasite. Some single-celled thing. We just have to give him medicine for the next 10 days and bring in Tigger to make sure he doesn't have it. We could probably get away with not bringing Ttigger in, but it'd be nice to get him back to the vet again. He can be a serious pain, but the vet clinic assures us they're used to problem cats, and since all they do is cat medecine, I tend to believe them.

We also got Nagano his first shots, and he's been feeling a little down ever since we got back. Of course, for Nagano, 'a little down' means 'not spastically pawing at everything in the house that moves'. So he's doing okay.

Yes, yes, I'll try and get some more footage of the kittens this weekend, but Jess and I are trying to get ourselves into a schedule, especially now that we have to keep an eye on cats so much.

Loves,

-N