So, you remember me mentioning The Happy Neighbor Cat, a.k.a. Mister Siamese, a.k.a. Hunter in this blog before?
Well, we stopped seeing him around a month or so ago. When I thought about it, I hoped he wasn’t hurt or missing, but I didn’t think about it much. The weather was crappy for a while and our indoor/outdoor cats were inside most of the time due to kitty-colds, so I figured he was just resting and keeping warm inside.
Two weekends ago, the neighbor who owns him, who I knew lived in the apartment complex down the way, but I didn’t know exactly where, knocked on the door. I guess he got out and crawled through “the kitty highway” (the missing slat in the fence that allows cats to move between backyard and front yard) and was hiding in our backyard. After Kim climbed through some bushes to grab him, we got to talking to the neighbor. Mister Siamese (my name for him, from before we knew his actual name) had gotten a cut and badly infected front paw, which is why he was indoors. He had a big bandage and a cone-collar. Supposedly, he had been to the vet, but was out of meds now and she didn’t have the cash to take him back. Apparently, the cat belonged to a former roommate who left it to her, but she wasn’t terribly attached to it (and was doing the bare minimum, if that, to take care of him.) She wanted to know if we wanted to adopt him and get him the medical care he needed. After days and days of discussion, we figured we couldn’t take in yet another cat, but offered to put her in touch with a friend of Kim’s who worked with a local no-kill rescue shelter.
Well, after the drop-off (this most recent weekend), certain facts unearthed. The cat hadn’t been to the vet in at least five years. I’m still not certain if it had been to the vet for the infection. She changed the bandage often, but wrapped it too tight, cutting off circulation. I guess the gauze ended up acting as a makeshift tourniquet of sorts. A lot of the flesh on that front leg was decayed and rotten under the bandaging when the shelter removed it. The cat was rushed to get some emergency operations where they had to cut away just about all of the flesh down to the bone. From what I last heard (a day or two ago), he probably won’t be a tripod cat. He should be able to keep the leg, but will likely no longer have any feeling in that appendage.
That cat’s whole situation and treatment really makes me want to turn on the waterworks if I stop to think about it too long. Fortunately, he’s in good hands now. He has always been extremely clingy and forces his way onto laps, so I have no doubt that he’ll make a great pet for someone when he finally heals enough to get adopted.
Even though he’ll be elsewhere and in a good home, I’ll still miss him.
That makes me want to give my kitties a squeeze and a kiss. 🙁
Thank you for finding a better place for that poor guy.