It has been a very poor weekend for me. None of this is Spec-Fiction related so please move on if you are bored with my personal life.
I let the cats out Sunday and one of them did not come back. I went out at 8PM to go to my usually Sunday night poker and my kitten Gracie was lying in the middle of road in a puddle of blood. I stopped the car picked her up and she was still alive. She was panting, but otherwise seemed to be unconscious. She had been hit in the face and here eye was out of the socket and her jaw was broken. She bled all over the front seat of the truck as I brought her at 90 MPH to the pet emergency room nearby.
The next day I had my first colonoscopy. It was not a pleasant thing and I was not in the mood for it. I was pumped up with air so the doctor could get around inside me. He had trouble at one corner and kept pumping air and asking the nurse to press on me. I have terrible cramps now and a headache from the sedative.
Gracie, the kitten, is stable and in pain, but she might live. They might even save her eye. Erica drove her down to a big animal Hospital in NJ where they will operate and set her jaw, if she lives through the next few days. The cost will be about $5,000. It's a lot for a cat that I got from the pound, but you get attached to these little furry things. It means putting off retiring for six months or more.
The day the cat got hit, I went to pick up the stuff you have to drink before the colonoscopy. At the drugstore, I bought a pink collar with a bell for the kitten so I could find her easily. She runs off and refuses to come back into the house. When I bought it, I had the thought that I she would die in this collar. I've buried too many of my furry friends over the year and I sometimes have depressing thoughts about them. They live for such a short time.
2 Comments
Heartfelt condolences for you and your little kitten, Gracie.
Lee K.
Thanks Lee. I didn’t think anyone actually read this thing.
Gracie is doing very well and most likely will not die just yet. She is still bleeding from her face and her red blood cell count went down so she received a transfusion. She perked up enough and the swelling has gone down enough that they are operating (I think) this morning. She is less injured than we thought, even though her jaw is a mess. She has a feeding tube now because the broken jaw prevents her from eating.
The fear is that she may be blind. She reacts to motion with her good eye, but doesn’t track.
Erica went down to see here and she was her cranky little self, insisting on attention. She doesn’t meow, though, the injuries make it difficult.
I have not seen her since the accident. My last image of her is her lying on the truck’s front seat gasping for air and then her clinging to me in terror as they took her off to the emergency room. I want to go down to NJ this afternoon after work and see her so I can get the horror of it out of my head. I can’t sleep because I keep seeing her in the road.
I washed my jacket and tried to clean out the front seat of the truck. I am afraid that “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” tapes are gunked up with kitty blood, and I will have to buy a new set when I listen to it again in six months. (I’ve been reading or listening to LOTR every six months since 1966.)
I will take pictures of the other cats and post them here. It will mark the Blog’s slide into total sappy self involvement.
Think good thoughts and keep sending out those positive waves.