One of the things I've been wanting to do is have a blog. A place to share my musings and mishaps with others. It's new year's eve and I decided to share a piece of writing I did for a class.
The 5000 dollar cat and other tales
Charlie was four pounds of orange and white fuzzy furred, vibrating kitten. When I met him, he crawled up my body and nuzzled his face in my neck. I was instantly smitten and took him home.
I knew I was going to catch it for bringing him home. We already had two cats and my Mom didn’t want more.
"I’ll clean the litter all the time, I’ll feed them. You won’t have to do anything." I said in a rush when I walked in. I picked him up and gave him to Mom.
"We don’t need more cats." She grumped, petting him.
"Since when is a cat about need?" I gleefully replied. And so Charlie became a member of the household along with Ashley cat and Houdini the escape artist.
When my sisters saw Charlie, they kept remarking on his huge paws, and their desire to change his name.
"Charlee’s our niece. Let’s call him Frodo. He’s got hobbit feet." Said one sister
"No…" I howled, "Frodo’s the White’s weird hermaphrodite cat. He knows his name. He’s Charlie." They didn’t understand that it was a fight they wouldn’t win. My sisters suggested many others names. Finally I told them I’d change it to Pretty Boy Floyd.
"He’s Charlie," They decided.
Charlie grew into his paws, and became an outgoing, confident cat. He charmed everyone who was around him. He would walk right up and meow to people on the street. He’d visit and insist on his share of attention when someone new was in the house.
"He’s so friendly, like a dog," they’d say.
Charlie has one strange habit we didn’t quite know what to make of. Charlie likes to suckle on people’s hands. If you don’t let him do it when he’s tired, he will have a little kitty meltdown like a two-year-old. He’ll yowl, cry, fuss, wind around your feet and climb on whomever he’d picked to give him affection, till he’s cuddled and has access to a hand. It isn’t slobbery, or wet, just this combo of lapping, sucking and kneading against your hand until he’s relaxed and asleep. Sometimes, the person he’s suckling on will fall asleep too. It’s strangely calming. The vet says it’s fairly common thing for cats to do.
Early one morning I went out to call him to breakfast.
"Din- din, Charlie, din-din," I hollered. He didn’t show. I thought I heard him but couldn’t find him, so after several tries; I went back to bed because I was sick. I wasn’t too concerned because Charlie liked to roam and he always came home. One night when driving, I saw him laying on a car down the street.
"Charlie! Go home!" I yelled out my window. He jumped up as guilty as can be and ran home to meet me at the door.
Later that morning I woke up quite abruptly to a sound I hope to never hear again. It was Charlie screaming in pain.
"He was in the street; he was trying to crawl to me." My sister Tara said visibly upset. My Mom, Tara and I tried to check him, but couldn’t find any injury. He didn’t have a mark on him. My happy-go-lucky baby was in agony, crying, and panting, screaming when you touched him, and I didn’t know what to do for him! I threw on some clothes, put Charlie carefully in a box and Tara drove to the nearest vet we could find open. That vet’s office sent us to the emergency animal hospital. Tara and I walked in and I started sobbing, trying to explain the situation to them. Luckily, the staff spoke ‘sob’ and got Charlie back to be looked at right away. Then they wanted to know how I was going to pay for him. I didn’t have that kind of money. It was almost three hundred just to have him looked at. Yet more for pain meds and x-rays. I looked at the clerk in disbelief; I might have to put Charlie down just because I couldn’t pay his vet fees. Tara put the initial bill on her credit card.
"Charlie’s pelvis is broken; we’re going to do an ultrasound to see what damage there is. You’ll need to make some decisions depending on what we find." The vet soberly told me. My heart dropped. I sat in the waiting room, and wept. The vet tech came and kindly explained the options, then asked if I wanted to sign a DNR, if things went south. I did. If he died, I wasn’t going to have him yanked back to a broken body.
Good news, a miracle even, there was no internal damage. Charlie had a clean break with no complications. Bad news, he needed to have major surgery to have a plate and six screws put in to hold the pelvic bones together. That meant lab work, more x-rays, more meds, I.V.s, more ultrasounds and a stay in intensive care for maybe a week. I spoke with my Mom, got her credit card and put the charges on it. All five thousand dollars worth.
Charlie came through the surgery with flying colors, was sent home on cage rest with his back half shaved and a huge incision with stitches down one leg. Eight weeks later, he got to leave his 2 by 3 cage and start back into normal life. He’s not quite the same friendly, silly cat. He gets very grumpy when the weather changes, and is more shy of strangers, but he’s a healthy, mostly happy animal that can do all the things that cats will do. My Charlie, the five thousand dollar cat.
