There is just the one pic in this blog but it is a beauty. Or actually, should I say it is OF Beauty.
You see, Beauty is the smallest of the litter that Daisy had in the middle of last year. Three were identical, one was jet black, and this little lady had an amazing coat that was heavy on the black and light on the tabby. Yet her face was totally tabby.
I found the five of them under the rider mower outside and mommy Daisy being feral, figured it was a good place to hide her newborns of just an hour or two.
I had never been around newborns before and really had no idea what to do. I just knew that I couldn’t leave them exposed like that to whatever fate might have in store for them. So, I grabbed a little box and one by one lifted the kittens into it, under the very protective watch of Daisy.
I moved them all into the bathroom just off the studio and made it unavailable for the next six to eight weeks as it was now the new nursery.
Daisy proved to be an amazing mom and even though she was feral, she trained these little guys for their new indoor (and ultimately indoor/outdoor) life in a way that was magical to watch. Her motherly instinct were amazing and though I had nothing to compare her to, I just knew she was proving to be a superb mom.
When they were old enough, she began to take them all outside and my open-door policy on the office here, meant that soon they were all coming and going as they pleased. Yes, there was always the risk that one day they might leave for good, but they always had a bed here and they knew it. So, thankfully they would return each night for dinner and bed and then each morning have breakfast and then back outside to exploring as they all saw fit.
Of the five of them, Mercury left and never came back and that hurt. But I hope that she found happiness somewhere. I choose to believe that.
I think it was around six months, disaster struck. There had been some kind of a fight and within a day or so, Beauty’s right eye was seriously red and swollen and she was in bad trouble.
I whisked her off to the vet and that’s when the vet gave the bad news that unfortunately the best thing to do was to remove the eye. There was a bad scratch and a severe infection and they gave little or no chance that things wouldn’t just continue to get worse regardless of what we could do.
But, I didn’t have it in me to allow them to take her eye. I couldn’t condemn her to a life with just one eye despite all their ominous warnings.
I was on very thin ice from a knowledge point of view. I had no real experience in dealing with anything like this in the past. But I just couldn’t give up on her like that.
So, Morgan and I kept her in our bathroom for over three weeks, and three times a day we subjected the poor little soul to different syringes of medicine and applications of antibiotic ointment in her eye.
We would have to wrap her up in a swaddling blanket and then I held her while Morgan did the ointment. I was strong enough to do the syringes of medicine, but holding her still was all I was able to do when it came to the ointment. Thankfully Morgan was more resilient than me and she handled the tough part.
The poor child was bone weary from being kept isolated in the bathroom for such a long time and yet she never once got nasty on us. She put up with it all and proved that you don’t have to be the biggest and strongest in order to be a super trooper.
She toughed it out and in the end, she won.
Her eye was saved and her eyesight unaffected.
Since then we have kept her indoors with the three indoor guys and though the smallest, she rules the roost with her endless personality and sense of mischief.
She will climb up the door casing of any door and perch on the narrowest of edges atop the door. Each time I leave a ladder unattended, she climbs up to the top to see where it might lead her.
There is no obstacle that she cannot overcome, much as she overcame one of the biggest a little creature could ever face.
And as I wandered past the sofa an hour ago, I saw her curled up and happy in my spot … making it her own. That’s when I took this pic.
It all makes me think back to the dark days when the professional’s advice was to just take the eye and be done with it. “Cats fare quite well with just one” she said.
So, the word expediency springs to mind. It’s definition is: the quality of being convenient and practical despite possibly being improper or immoral; convenience.
I am not normally accused of being proper or moral, but apparently in this instance, I made the right choice.
… just a thought!