I have been trying to figure out how to report what happened this week with the litter of kittens the man has been watching over in his temporary home. I told him that kittens are notoriously fragile, but I didn't expect to hear that violence would visit the nursery on his patio. A few days ago, he found that three of the four kittens had been killed by one of the tomcat strays, bitten on their necks. Only one kitten escaped, the mostly white with calico patches. The man was devastated, and has been down on life ever since. I think I am entirely capable of understanding how difficult it is to go through this, and I regret that he has to feel the same way I did when the first two foster kittens died here in June. It took me almost two weeks to fully recover, and in that time, I was unable to tolerate even seeing pictures of kittens on the Internet. My man is stuck on the memory that the last time he saw the little tabby kitten, he was telling him how big he was going to be when he grew up. My heart aches when he says that.
I told him that he should name the surviving kitten after the movie The Highlander. ("There can be only one.") The central character was Connor McLeod, and he's testing whether he likes the sound of calling her "Connie." I asked him for a photo to share of her in a few days when she opens her eyes.
I took my scruffy kitten in to the shelter again today, thinking it was going to be a regular checkup. Apparently as long as she has the fungal infection, she can only go to the lime dip, not to the regular kitten area, to guarantee she can't pass the infection to the other babies. I do not know how long this will go on, but I hate taking her in for these treatments. I know she hates it too. I can't believe she forgives me after each trip, but she does. This stuff is burning her fur, in much the same way someone would feel if she bleached her hair three times in a week. (My younger child knows this feeling.) It is fragile and pulling out in clumps. She has a couple tiny bald spots, like above one eye (not the usual one all cats have there) and the underside of her tail. I swear, I am certainly the only person who would ever love this unfortunate animal. FIV positive, ringworm fungus making her fur fall out, and upper respiratory infection that she can't shake making her sneeze and have crusty eyes. I have to promise her every day that I won't give up on her until she is healthy and glossy. There will be great reward for my effort, I believe. When they called me from the shelter and said, "We have special needs kittens," I had no idea how accurate that statement was.
She is having another Loch Ness Monster evening. Every time I try to take a photo of her to accompany the post (and I've taken a couple dozen so far), all I get is a dark, blurry shadow. She is too busy killing everything in the living room to be still longer than a single second. So, I give up. I'll put one or two of the blurry ones and call it good.
No comments:
Post a Comment