I got home Monday but it’s taken me several days to catch up to my life! Iggy and Lena were of course fine, but on day 2 when I brushed Claude, I noticed some pretty awful scabs on his back – bad enough to bleed when I touched them with the comb. Somehow my petsitter had not noticed. (Don’t get me started.) The vet paid a visit and said it was extreme flea allergy. (How did fleas get in my house?!) I bought a round of Advantage – much as I hate to put that toxic potion on anything, let alone my kitties – but it has to be done. And as I went to apply to a sleeping Iggy, he jerked his head up, knocking my hand and causing a drop to go into his EYE. He raced around the house in pain and fear, and I felt sick with remorse. Call #2 to the aforementioned vet, who said he “should be okay, but flush his eye with saline and put Neosporin in it.” I said that was unlikely to happen, as Iggy is my ninja kitty who can elude me easily any moment of the day. (Three days later, his eye is not blind and has finally stopped weeping.)
Good times! Welcome home!!
I also learned that Charlie, my patio kitty, had gone missing in recent days. Charlie is an independent contractor among strays – portly enough that I suspect he’s pawning food off unsuspecting neighbors – but I was still worried about him, and delighted to find him the next day, hanging out in the parking lot where I had originally trapped him. (The ferals over there don’t like him and steer clear; he’s like the Kiefer Sutherland character in “Stand By Me,” with Elvis hair and a sneer.) Since that morning he’s been back and napping on the patio chair in front.
Anyway, it was a rough homecoming, mitigated only by a text from Pokey’s new family on the eve of my drive to SF to bring him home: “Can he stay one more week? He’s doing better.” My spirits soared, even as I realized it was likely only a temporary reprieve. We shall see how he continues to do in the next few.
And I was finally able to spring Mickey Blue eyes from his temporary digs – a cage in a horse trailer – where my kind rescue colleagues had kept him while I was away. I wasn’t expecting a cage, but apparently he… uh… could not be trusted to run around loose, as he ate everyone else’s food. (In his defense, he was only trapped a month ago, and had clearly been starving. So he was just making up for lost meals. 😉
Here he is today, clearly enjoying being back in my fold.
He is absolutely precious – very eager to be loved, and already quite socialized. He’ll only need a week with me, and then I’ll start the full-court press to find him a home. He’s another one I’d keep in a heartbeat if I lived in a real house and not a condo, with a yard instead of a 3 x 12 deck. But perhaps the restrictions are good in that they keep me from becoming a full-on halfway house for abandoned critters.
As much as I loved my time away, I missed these guys terribly, every day. Not having something to take care of made me feel useless and self-indulgent. But don’t you suppose Saint Francis himself had a cocktail, took in some theater and got a massage once in a while?
I think St. Francis did all that and more, danced in a conga line and sang the night away. The critters want you to be happy!