SHE LIVES...

"If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel,

You are looking the wrong way."

                                                       Barry Commoner

Although everything I own is still malfunctioning, and I am unable to post photos with my blog posts - which I find mundanely boring - I manage to survive, as does the latest victim of surgery.

Being a Crazy Cat Lady is not all fun and games, and I would advise anyone aspiring to this height to look deep into one's soul.  It is not the love of cats - or any other animal for that matter - that one has to affirm.  It is the strength to endure the suffering the animal may have to endure, whether it be by accident, illness or, as in our latest case, the worst sort of inbreeding.    Inbreeding I may add, as a result of irresponsible pet owners.  My only consolation at this stage is that I managed to save my own corner of my own little world at that farm.   The ferals (with the exception of the two smartest, strongest males), were all fixed before we left, at least ensuring the females would have no further inbred litters.

I waited a year to have the last two of the rescues fixed due to their diminutive statures.  Helen, due to being blind, also needed to know her way around the apartment really well, before the trauma of surgery.   

Three or so days after Helen had her surgery, she began to have Grand Mal seizures.  It was Sunday. I had to hold her through every seizure, my son couldn't even watch, he escaped to the new gardens he is designing.  And stayed there.  I stayed up with Helen all night, ending up with her in the vet's office promptly at 9 AM the next morning.   Helen had two Petit Mal seizures in front of him.  He immediately put her on an I.V. with fluids and steroids.  She stopped having seizures and was  "resting" at 2 PM that day when I called to check on her. 

After doing the research I discovered epilepsy in cats does not usually appear until aged 2-3 years, due to the cerebrum not being fully developed.  Although something is wrong neurologically, she is after all blind, she had not had any incidents, and although she is one month short of a year old but only weighs 4.5 lbs. she has had no health issues.   The only trigger I could find was a drug called Meloxicam which was administered for pain and inflammation after the surgery, staying in the animal's system for 10 days.

I have had all the farm cats fixed at the high volume clinic and this was the first incident, so I am by no means blaming them.   My vet said that he does not routinely administer that drug.  The side effects include seizures, and we are hoping the dose was far too much for her size, coupled with the fact that she is - as my son says - a 'closet kitty' that caused the incident.   She looked nothing like our Helen when I brought her home - in my still-falling-apart vehicle.

She wouldn't eat until my son - her preferred adoptive Dad - came home, at  which point she sat by her food bowl and stared at him until he went over to sit with her on the floor. She finally ate and had some water.  Today she is finally looking like our Helen.  She is eating on her own every two hours or so, is on steroids for the next thirty days - just in case - and rests a lot. 

For my part, I sit quietly listening to Lawrence Krauss lectures on You-Tube -volume on low- or reading the only book of his I could get my hands on in a hurry.  ATOM.  Incredibly enough he mentions the discovery of ZERO.  I have the book on the discovery of zero and it is great.    I am waiting you see, for the slightest little out-of-the-ordinary noise that could indicate Helen having a problem.  I don't mind.

Having worked in emergency services so long, I know that an unconscious human is feeling and knowing nothing on a 'knowing' level, and if that human is conscious, said human can be reassured with words, as well as the comfort of a loved one nearby.    Animals cannot understand why things are happening to them, thus can only rely on the proximity of those they love for comfort, and the trust they have in their human to help them.

The black and white city feral has been eating my sons seedlings as they try to mature ( I told him not to put the cat-nip out in the herb garden until last...    :} ).   Last night the Son was standing at the back window staring out at his gardens when I heard him mumbling to himself, "There's that darn cat, bet he's going for the plants....."   

I raced out to the back with a cup of dried cat food, and did the Hansel and Gretal routine, spreading the food bits from the cat, to the flat rock on the side of the house where I leave his food.  I had been remiss in feeding him due to keeping my eyes and ears glued to Helen.   He continued to sit.  He is in really rough shape now after this past winter, so I thought maybe he might like a jar of strained baby food beef left-over from poor Murray.  I put it in a disposable dish and raced out with that, where he still sat, not moving.   He actually let me approach to within three feet of him, while I talked to him, but he wouldn't move toward the food.  He just looked at me, and there was something in his eyes. As if he were remembering the old man that was his owner, from the strange little house across the street.  Remembering long before, when he had his elderly owner to talk to him, before the man was put in a nursing home, and the man's relatives came to take everything of value out of the home - including the Baby Grand I saw whisked into the moving van - and threw the cat out the door.  (Someday I will find out the cat's name, I found someone, who knows someone, who knew a friend of the man, who has since passed away).

I flew up the stairs to the back window and what I saw was an act of kindness rarely seen in humans.  There the cat sat, in the same spot I left him, while he watched another, totally emaciated cat eat the baby food.  When the new stranger had finished, only then did the cat follow the trail of food to his rock.

Though in the past I have tried to maintain some sort of faith in mankind, the more needlessly abandoned animals my daughter and I run across (dogs, ferrets, you name it), my faith has dwindled to, " I abhore people, though adore the people I choose to associate with."

My disdain for Freud was well known in my psych. courses, but even Krauss refers to him in ATOM. After looking in the city feral's eyes last night, and seeing what I believe to be hope on his part, as well as a rememberance of love once showered upon him by a lonely man, I must refer to Freud for the first time in my life, with some iota of respect, for he said,  " I have found little that is good about human beings.  In my experience most of them are trash."    Way to go Freud. 

Yes Prof. Turner, I said it.